


Fall in the Belief

by RedheadAmongWolves



Series: For Which We Were Born [4]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Because it's me, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Gore & Violence, Case Fic, Flirting, Flirting via Murders, Holden is Will and Hannibal’s Son, M/M, Murder Family, Murder Husbands, Period Typical Homophobia, Post-Hannibal (TV) Season/Series 03, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Unhealthy Relationships, almost wrote implied but then i remembered ;), it's still hannibal y'all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:15:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 59,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29065692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedheadAmongWolves/pseuds/RedheadAmongWolves
Summary: In the aftermath of his fathers’ resurrection and his own revelation, Holden Ford finds himself in a rapidly changing world, where each step forward to meet his destiny is even more crucial than the last.Enter, stage right: a power-hungry Morgan Verger, trying to make his own mark on the world out from under the shadow of his father, and offering Holden a place beside him in the sun— a place Holden has never felt like he belonged. Will Holden accept? Or is his glory to be found in the dark?
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Margot Verger, Holden Ford/Morgan Verger, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Series: For Which We Were Born [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735834
Comments: 95
Kudos: 74





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so continues murdery prince holden and his ascent to the throne
> 
> this is the fourth installment in my MindHannibal AU, so I’d recommend reading at least the first two fics before diving into this one~ otherwise it might not make a lot of sense lol
> 
> this is dedicated to the incomparable [cannibelism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibelism/pseuds/cannibelism) for making this the absolute most fun universe to write. 
> 
> enjoy!!!!!!

They ask Holden to speak at the funeral, because being the last guy to see Jack Crawford alive apparently makes Holden the official and final authority on the man’s character— though Holden suspects it’s more likely that they couldn’t find anyone else they could rope into doing it, because everyone else is dead. 

Dead, or hated Crawford. What little good remained of the man’s reputation burned up when he did.

The problem, beyond Holden also despising the man, is that Holden isn’t good with speeches, and it isn’t just the socially awkward act to blame. If you get him started on something he cares about, namely his research, like serial killings, or his hobbies, like serial killings, he can babble on for forever. He’ll ramble faster than the wind because he’s used to people trying to shut him up, so he has to get all of it out as quickly as he can if he wants to be heard. 

But set him in front of a crowd and make him talk about anything remotely personal, his tongue goes dry as a desert. There’s not much to share. Not much he  _ can _ share. 

And he certainly doesn’t have any charming anecdotes about Jack Crawford to weave into a eulogy. The man despised him in return, until he didn’t, for like, half a day, before he found out who Holden really was, and he doubts  _ those _ final moments would warrant Holden being the main orator at the wake. 

“Just be honest, then,” Bill had advised when Holden asked, because Bill wasn’t the biggest Crawford fan either by the end there. “But not too honest. It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, even if he did almost get you killed.” Then he’d clapped Holden on the shoulder with a wouldn’t-wanna-be-you smile.

It’s been a lot of sticky yellow tape in the weeks following the deadly standoff at the Wolf Trap house. No bodies to find in the ashes— because two of the supposed three weren’t there  _ to  _ find, not that anyone but Holden knew that— so no graves to fill. Crawford got his posthumous medal of merit, but quietly, because he still supposedly helped a federal prisoner escape and endangered the life of a fellow agent. The media has been frothing at the mouth in front of Quantico every day, snapping its jaws and thrusting microphones at Holden and Bill and Wendy every time they hurry up or down the front steps, and Holden’s been in more newspapers than he ever anticipated even in his worst nightmares. 

He’s not in hiding like his fathers, so there’s no real threat to having his image out there, but their little team has agreed it’s probably best to have minimal fame when dealing with psychopaths who  _ crave _ fame. So, once Holden got back from his mandatory week’s leave, they’d been hunkering down in the BSU offices while waiting for things to cool over. Holden had been seriously delusional if he thought they were going to get back into the routine of road school and interviews like slipping into an old sweater. At least he’s gotten a shit ton of paperwork done, and they’ve rearranged the office furniture a couple times. 

The funeral is the first time Holden’s been back in general society since that fateful night. He thought it’d be a nice change of pace, but instead he’s jumpy, chafing at the insides of his own skin and fidgeting with his suit sleeves enough that Bill had to grab his wrists and shove a drink into his hands just so he can white-knuckle onto something. The cut on his palm has healed quickly, leaving only a thin white line, but the icy glass is still a welcome relief on his sweaty skin. 

The guest list consists of a dozen or so bureau officials and retired agents, but everyone’s eyes are on Holden. His only comfort is it’ll be a short service, since there’s no casket to view or lower into the earth; Holden is slated to speak after Shepard’s introduction, then some priest will lead them in a prayer, and he can go back to hiding in the bureau’s basement until this storm properly blows over, and he can figure out his next move without the weight of the public’s eye crushing him. 

That’s another reason he’s itching. It’s like he can feel his claws inside his knuckles, just aching to be flexed.

“Nicer venue than I thought the bureau would spring for,” Bill says at his elbow, returning from greeting a few upstairs coworkers. He’s got a drink of his own in his hand, and an identical suit to Holden’s, though his isn’t as painstakingly ironed. Wendy appears a moment later in her simple black dress, and Holden feels the knot in his stomach lessen ever so slightly with their presence. 

They’re in a fancy church downtown, even though Holden doesn’t think Crawford was particularly religious, but it beats a funeral parlor or a rec center. The building is a mash of modern and ancient: they’re in the renovated gathering area, with their refreshments and their glad-handing, but just beyond the open double doors Holden can see into the sanctuary. Its steepled ceilings are sky-high and the dark wood floors beneath them creak with age, and the whole place is cast in a blue-yellow wash from the enormous stained glass windows surrounding them, depicting the Stations of the Cross, which Holden would like to look at a little longer, if he had time. 

“They didn’t,” Wendy says. “This has private donor written all over it.”

“Seems Crawford still has friends in high places.” Bill flicks a look heavenward. Holden resists the urge to glance down at his shoes. 

“There you are,” Shepard’s voice carries over the low din of mingling attendees, and they all turn. “Bill, Wendy,” he greets. He squints at the drink in Holden’s hand, then up to his face. “You ready?” It’s rhetorical. He doesn’t really care that Holden would much rather turn on his heels and sprint all the way back to Quantico. 

“Yes sir,” Holden answers, and Shepard just gives him another skeptical look before moving off to start ushering guests into the sanctuary. Holden throws back the rest of his watery drink, though he knows it won’t kick in soon enough for any semblance of liquid courage. He grimaces. “Showtime.”

Bill takes his empty glass for him and nudges his shoe with his own. “Go on, you’ll be fine. Just focus on Wendy or me if you get nervous.” Wendy gives a matching reassuring smile, and Holden follows after Shepard. 

The guests shuffle into their pews, and Holden makes his way to his seat in the front row, where a flower-framed photograph of Crawford waits on an easel only a few yards from his knees. It’s an old photo, from his heyday with the bureau, before his face grew solemn and his eyes perpetually angry. This was the man his fathers knew, befriended. Welcomed into their homes. 

And, eventually, turned against. Got their revenge against, with Holden’s help.

Holden stares at it while Shepard makes his opening remarks at the front of the room, Crawford’s paper eyes staring blankly back. He doesn’t feel guilt, or regret, about anything that happened that night. He knew Crawford got what he deserved, and Holden had meant what he’d said to his parents: he knows who he is now, what he wants.

Right now, though, it just feels like the space between exhale and inhale. He’s gone over his cliff, but he hasn’t resurfaced yet. He wonders if he’s even hit the water.

“Now, we’ll hear from Jack’s successor and friend, Holden Ford,” he hears Shepard say, and there’s no applause, since this is a funeral, so it’s deafeningly quiet as Holden stands and crosses to the podium, save for the floor, which creaks loud as a gunshot under each step.

He pulls out his notecards with shaky hands, clears his throat, shifts on his feet, before finally looking up at all the faces staring back at him. 

“Thank you, uh, Director Shepard,” he says into the microphone. There’s no feedback squeal, mercifully, but he can hear his voice bounce around the cavernous room, filling every corner before volleying back to him.  _ Just be honest, _ Bill reminds him in his head. He seeks out Bill in the audience, seated next to Wendy, and watches as the man gives him a low thumbs-up. Holden clears his throat again. His notes crinkle in his grip. “I only had the privilege of knowing Agent Crawford for a brief while, but I— I have felt the significance of his legacy every day in my work with the FBI.”

“Jack Crawford was a, uh, force to be reckoned with. He was an exemplary agent in his time with the bureau: a man of his convictions, and, and stubborn in the pursuit of justice. Without him, the work my colleagues and I do today would not exist, or be treated with the respect he fought for it to have.” _ Lies, lies—  _ Holden  _ earned _ his place, fought tooth and nail to reverse the indignity Crawford had let descend upon the BSU— but it’s a funeral, it’s all lies. People pretending to miss someone they barely knew. People pretending their lives will be different in their absence. 

For a brief, flickering moment, Holden feels a pang of pity for Jack Crawford. To die without any friends is an ugly death.

Maybe that’s why he says what he says next. Why his eyes drift to the side of his notecards, away from his carefully chosen, palatable, forgettable words, to the flowers framing Crawford’s photograph. They’re already starting to brown at the edges, left in the heat for too long. 

“Crawford served as a mentor of mine, even when he wasn’t aware of it, or, later, particularly happy about it,” —this earned a polite chuckle from the crowd— “but it was… inevitable. Our paths were destined to cross, and so much of who I am today is a reflection of his actions.” Holden’s hands aren’t shaking anymore. He looks up, only this time not at Bill but the rest of the eyes fixed on his, some intent, some bored, some confused. 

And yet, he thinks, they can’t see  _ him. _ They’re blind, like Crawford. Blind like Holden swears he will never be. 

Holden continues slowly, the words coming to him as he speaks. “It is… an unfortunate price of power that you don’t always get to see the effects of your legacy. The future will look different because of you, but more often than not, you just become a footnote in the history books. All we can hope to do is… inspire people to follow in our footsteps. Keep our names alive through them. And to do that, you have to live your truth, no matter who believes you. Because the truth always outs.”

A shadow shifts at the doors at the far end of the church, and it’s just a janitor with his rolling mop, already ready to clear up after them and sweep up the evidence they were ever here, but for a moment, in the gleam of blue and yellow light, Holden lets himself pretend its his fathers, lurking in the wings, watching. 

_ Waiting. _

Someone coughs, and the illusion shatters. Reality crashes back, and so does mortification. “Uh,” Holden says, looking blearily back at his notes, but he’s not sure where he should pick back up, having gone so far off-script. His mind is whirring now, and there’s a queasy feeling in his stomach. “Jack— Jack Crawford will get to spend eternity with his wife, whom he loved more than anything. And we— we will do our best to carry on his legacy. Thank you.”

He hurries back to his seat, again to silence. He can feel Shepard’s incredulous glare, but Holden clasps his hands in his lap and doesn’t look up. The priest takes his vacated spot at the podium and raises his arms as he asks them to bow their heads for prayer. 

The crowd does, including Shepard, who is probably deciding to save a hell of a scolding for later, but the sensation of being watched doesn’t lift from Holden’s shoulders. He can feel the touch of a gaze practically  _ burning _ on the back of his neck. 

“...ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” the priest intones.

Trying to be as subtle as possible, Holden slowly slants a glance over his shoulder. He scans over the bent heads around him, until he suddenly meets the eyes of someone staring straight back at him. 

It’s a man, a few rows behind and across the aisle. The man’s face shifts into a cat-like smile when he sees Holden looking back, and Holden’s face heats. He whips back around to face the front so fast his neck twinges. 

“Amen,” the priest concludes.

“Amen,” the crowd echoes, Holden a second behind.

Then it’s back to the lobby, where people shake hands and make their excuses and flee out into the sunlight. Holden gets a lot of “sorry for your loss” and “he was a great man,” like he was Crawford’s son rather than barely a coworker. Holden lets the faces blur together, pretending he isn’t looking for the smiling man. There’s a flash of bright red in his periphery, a flag in the sea of black, but it’s gone before he can focus.

Bill joins him in a break in the hand-shaking. “Improv isn’t your strong suit,” is all he says, which makes Holden huff a laugh, though it comes out far too brittle. 

“I was just trying to be honest,” he defends weakly, but before Bill can retort, Wendy is emerging from the crowd towards them, and there’s a woman at her side.

The woman is beautiful: she’s clearly older than Wendy, with crow’s feet at her shadowed eyes and lines framing her burgundy-lipsticked mouth, though her hair is dark with no traces of grey where it’s pinned back in a low bun, and Holden wonders distantly if it’s dyed or natural. She’s expensively dressed in a silky black pantsuit and mile-high heels that lengthen her short stature, and gripped in her hand is a shiny black cane, topped with a silver handle, that she leans on heavily. Holden knows who she is before Wendy even opens her mouth, and the knot in his stomach hardens to stone.

“Holden, Bill, allow me to introduce Dr. Alana Bloom,” Wendy says, and Alana smiles without showing her teeth. While the expression doesn’t quite meet her eyes, it isn’t an unpleasant smile, just… guarded. She shakes Bill’s hand, then Holden’s, and her warm palm grasps his sweaty one for just a second longer than he expects before she releases him.

“Lovely eulogy,” Alana says. “Not bad for a usurper.”

Holden blinks. “Uh—”

But she breezes on with a quirk of her mouth. “I’m teasing. Jack and I weren’t on the friendliest terms when we last saw each other, but even I didn’t want his last rites to be as bitter as the past thirty years.”

The words click into place. “You arranged for the service to be held here.”

She nods. “A final peace offering, if you will.”  _ To clear a guilty conscience? _ “And an opportunity to meet you.”

“Me?”

“I’ve heard a lot about you these past few weeks. I’m curious what all the fuss is about.” It doesn’t feel like the whole truth, though he doesn’t doubt she’s heard of him. He glances to Wendy, who looks back at him unapologetically. It makes sense: she’s Alana’s old student, and they likely reconnected when the FBI thought Alana and her family were being targeted during Will and Hannibal’s return. Holden and Wendy, however, had been going through a rough patch in their working relationship at the time, so he cringes to think about what she’d had to say.

Alana and she must have negotiated something further, though, because Wendy loops her arm through Bill’s. “Let’s give them a moment to talk. I heard Shepard asking around for you.” As she leads him away, she and Alana share a conspiratorial smile, while Bill raises his brow at Holden. Holden feels very out of his depth.

Before he can think of something to say, or begin to ask what perception she’s crafted of him, Alana speaks. “We have another engagement at a friend’s event tonight, but would you like to have dinner with my family tomorrow evening?” 

And that… was not what he was expecting. The hearsay must not have been all bad, then, if it’s inspired her to invite Holden into her home. 

“Your family?” Much like Shepard, Holden has a feeling Alana only asks questions she already knows the answers to. Holden wouldn’t be able to make excuses even if he had one. 

“Yes. In fact—” she turns, looking for someone in the dwindling crowd, and Holden follows her gaze. 

As if on cue, he spots another stunning woman weaving towards them, looking like she’s just stepped off the pages of  _ Vogue, _ with her brown curls loose and feathery over her shoulders and her slim figure clad in a black dress that sparkles as she moves. She holds her chin high and her spine tall, giving the impression of nobility. 

And beside her is the smiling man. 

“This is my sister-in-law, Margot Verger,” Alana introduces, her own smile warm for the first time as she holds out a hand, which Margot takes with a matching grin, like it’s been ages since they’ve seen each other rather than a few minutes. It’s an expression Holden has seen on his fathers’ faces many times. Holden also knows from his fathers that Margot is very much  _ not _ Alana’s sister-in-law, but he doesn’t comment. “And this is my son, Morgan.”

Up close, the first thing Holden notices about Morgan Verger is that… well, he looks a lot like Holden.

He’s taller, and a few years older, Holden knows, but Holden can’t help but feel he’s looking into some kind of warped mirror. There’s the same unruly brown hair, left to run wild rather than slicked back like Holden’s; the deep-set eyes that probably don’t blink as much as they should, though considerably more well-rested, without Holden’s dark circles. Morgan has the light dusting of a goatee that Holden could grow if he didn’t hate the itch. 

He looks like Holden would, if Holden weren’t masquerading as something other than what he is. Morgan oozes confidence. Satisfaction. This is a man completely comfortable in his own skin. 

Beside them, Holden notices Alana dart a glance between them, a slight crease appearing between her brow. Morgan, however, only seems to smile wider.

He sticks out a hand, and Holden takes it robotically. “Hi,” Holden hears himself say, like an idiot.

Morgan’s canines are sharp. “Hi,” he echoes. Amusement colors his voice and Holden fights an irrational blush, and drops Morgan’s fingers like they’re on fire. Thankfully the women don’t seem to notice, though there’s an unreadable flash in Morgan’s eyes. 

“Did you invite Holden for dinner yet?” Margot asks Alana, who nods. Margot turns her smile on Holden, and he can’t help but smile back. She has one of those faces. “Do say you’ll come, it’s the least we could do to thank you.”

“You— there’s no need to thank me for anything, ma’am,” Holden tries, but she dismisses his protest with a wave of her hand.

“Call me Margot, please. And yes, we do, because if it weren’t for you, Dr. Lecter and Will Graham would still be out there, and who knows what the hell they’d have planned next.”

_ It’s not them you have to worry about, _ a voice sneers in Holden’s head, but for a bewildering moment, he’s not sure if it’s referring to himself, or—

Morgan speaks up. “Lecter said something once about a bargain to fulfill,” he leans in towards Holden, like he’s sharing a secret. “I think he meant me.”

“Morgan,” Alana chides, something dark in the undercurrent, while Margot addresses Holden.

“So? Will you?” 

Holden’s learned to trust his instincts. It was one of the key lessons his fathers instilled in him, from an early, early age— that if his gut says something is off, something is off. If the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, there’s lightning about to strike, so get out of the water. If you smell smoke, there’s fire, and you aren’t to play with it unless you’re certain you won’t get burned.

Holden’s eyes are burning with smoke, Holden’s skin is shattered in goosebumps, Holden’s stomach is  _ churning _ . Every speck of good sense is yelling at him to run as far as he can from this family, back to his basement, back to Bill and Wendy and their work.  _ His _ work, coiled and waiting ever so impatiently in his fingertips. Let the past fall to the past, let the future get on with itself, and hope he’ll regain his rhythm with time.

But he feels the caress of Morgan’s gaze like a scalding hand, and he hears his own voice, before he can even think the words.

“Dinner sounds great.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what was that red?? hmmmm
> 
> in my head morgan is played by [adam pålsson](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EEKoTynWsAAsgAA.jpg) but with longer hair & stubble, mostly cause he kept showing up on my netflix’s recommended and i was like Hey. 
> 
> alternative title for this chapter, playing in my head through Holden’s eulogy: ~tomorrow there’ll be more of ussss~
> 
> don’t own/profit from hannibal/mindhunter, etc etc, disclaimers disclaimers


	2. Chapter 2

The Maryland compound of the Verger estate looks exactly as Holden expected it to: a hulking stone building, as wide as a city block and as tall as a church, planted in the middle of a sprawling acreage surrounded by a chokehold of trees. A brick farm is visible a ways off, with a stable to the side.

It’s early evening when Holden pulls his car into the circle gravel drive, the sky a greying pink that casts everything in a sort of reddish hue. He’d arrived too early in his nervousness and sat in his car for a few minutes, hidden around the corner from the mouth of the mile-long driveway, hands sweating around the bottle of wine he’d brought as— what he realizes now— a surely ridiculous gift. These people could afford every bottle of wine in the world if they wanted. 

But that’s not why he’s nervous. True, he’s not great at small talk, but he was raised as the paragon of politeness, so he can navigate it. No, he’s nervous for the same reason he was nervous to meet Crawford that first day, and Bedelia du Maurier, before her death. He’d thought the night in Wolf Trap would flip a switch, somehow, make him more cool-headed and settled under his mask, but apparently his inherited ghosts aren’t done with him quite yet. He’s unsure if this new audience will see through him and recognize the speech patterns, the mannerisms, because they knew his dads— in this case, intimately. 

Not to mention he hasn’t been able to get Morgan Verger’s impish smile out of his head all day, and all the night before. 

Holden had grown up in big houses, with his tėtis’ acquired taste for life’s luxuries, but they were houses that felt like home: cozy and warm and welcoming. Let no one accuse Hannibal Lecter of being inhospitable. Verger Estate, however, emits an air of hostility as Holden climbs the steps. He’d call it a fortress more than a home. Built to protect its inhabitants. To keep the world out.

_Or keep something in._

His pulse taps a sticky staccato in his wrists as he knocks on the door, unsure if they’ll be able to hear the sound through the millions of rooms, and he’s debating if he should knock again or try the creepy pig’s head knocker when it opens only a moment later to a beaming Margot, and Holden is bustled inside.

“Holden! Right on time. Oh thank you, that’s very sweet,” Margot says cheerily, relieving Holden’s hands of his gift and managing not to sound condescending as she glances at the label. It’s set aside on a small table and forgotten in the next moment. “Come, this way, Alana’s in the parlor. Did you have any trouble finding us?”

He’s led through arched hallways, following Margot’s clicking heels. This isn’t the kind of home you pad around in socks. The inside of the house is more colorful than the outside, sure, but no less museum-like. The walls are lined with art, probably all authentic, and there are actual marble busts on tiny pillars dotting the way, and he catches glimpse of what he thinks might be a samurai sword on display down a branching hall. 

Margot chatters as she walks, seemingly anticipating Holden’s thoughts, so maybe this is just the common reaction. “This place has looked the same since my grandfather was a kid. We can’t do anything to change it since it was declared a historical landmark, so we spend most of our time at our home in Napa. That one’s more our style,” she winks over her shoulder at Holden, but he can’t help but think she fits in perfectly with the stately decor, like one of its statues come to life. 

They step into a brightly-lit room, which must be the parlor at the back of the house. Three enormous glass doors showcase the back patio and its stairs leading to the rest of the property, and they stand open now to welcome in the balmy summer night. A gentle breeze tumbles along the grass.

Holden had dressed in a light grey suit, one of his pricier ones that he saves for fancy business dinners— when he’s actually invited, which isn’t often. Margot’s in another dark dress, though this one is blue and wraps snugly around her waist, and her hair is as bouncy as it was the day before. Holden can clearly see the young woman she once was, and gets the impression that the Verger Estate has a habit of preserving all its inhabitants as artifacts. Or maybe it’s just the money keeping them young, and not something quite so _Dorian Gray._

Alana Bloom is perched on one of two parallel pristine white sofas, thumbing through a thick packet of papers. She paints the same elegant picture as yesterday, in a silky green blouse and pants, though now with the addition of a delicate pair of gold reading glasses on her nose, which she folds and sets aside with her papers as Holden enters. 

“Holden, welcome.”

“Good evening, Dr. Bloom,” Holden says, offering a smile. “Thank you again for having me.” 

“We’re delighted you agreed. And it’s Alana, please.” She stands, gestures to a bar in the corner. She’s absent her cane in the comfort of her own home, though she still moves stiffly. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Dinner will be ready in half an hour, so we have plenty of time to get tipsy,” Margot says beside him. In the distance, a phone rings. She swears. “I’ll catch up in a bit,” she promises, then swirls off again, Holden watching her go a little dazedly.

“She wasn’t like that when I met her,” he hears Alana say, and he turns back to find her watching him knowingly as she uncorks a bottle of wine. “Mason’s death was like a weight off her shoulders. Of elephant proportions.” 

Dark liquid splashes into the waiting glasses. “Mason. Her brother, right? Your spouse?” Holden says, because although he’s heard the true story from his fathers, she doesn’t know that. 

“Heir to the estate, before Morgan was born.” She doesn’t offer any further information about the true nature of their family affairs, so Holden doesn’t press.

“And Morgan is—?”

“Still at work.” She brings over the glasses, which Holden accepts. He prays he won’t spill on himself as he takes a sip, and— yeah, this bottle definitely cost more than his offering. He was too young for a full glass by the time he left his fathers’ home, but that doesn’t mean Hannibal hadn’t let him have a sip here and there. _Training the palate young_ , Tėtis said, to Will’s eye roll. “But he’ll be home any minute. He’s very excited to see you again.”

Holden tries to quell the little indecipherable flop his stomach gives at that. “What does he do?”

“We took the family company a different direction after Mason’s passing: not quite so much into pigs as our philanthropic endeavors. Morgan heads those departments, and he’s very hands-on. This is actually the first time he’s been with us in the States for a while. Usually he’s off somewhere in South America.” She sounds every inch the proud mother. 

“So lots of catching up to do at the office, then?” 

“Precisely, but we make sure we have his evenings. Sit down, please,” she gestures to the sofa mirroring her spot as she lowers herself down. “My hip gets a little out of sorts when we’re back on the East Coast.”

“My mom had that,” Holden says. Hannibal always gets cast as his mother in Holden’s fake origin story, to Hannibal’s chagrin and Will’s endless amusement, but it was easier to just keep calling Will _dad_ than navigate the Lithuanian translation _._ “Old work injury. It would ache whenever it snowed, so we usually stuck to warmer climates.” The best lies are based in truth— Hannibal’s bullet wound from the cliffside fight never quite properly healed while he and Will were on the run, so Holden grew up knowing to give his tėtis a wider berth on colder evenings, unless Will was around to soothe his discomfort. 

“What does she do?” 

“She’s a homemaker,” Holden says. He takes his place across from her, sitting carefully, almost afraid he’ll dirty the upholstery. “But she was in medicine, before she met my dad.”

“And him?”

“A professor. They’re on his sabbatical in Europe at the moment.”

“Usually people who join law enforcement have family members in similar professions,” she comments, the question evident even without phrasing it as so. 

“I’m probably considered more of a researcher than anything,” Holden replies with a sheepish smile, “so I tread more along scholarly lines.” 

This seems to satisfy her. Holden darts a glance towards the hall, but there’s no sign of Margot returning yet. Alana’s still studying him when he meets her eyes again, and he barely manages to resist the urge to tug at his collar, busying himself instead with taking another sip of wine. The estate is very quiet, save for the low whistle of the wind skirting the stone walls, and something like animal noises from the distant barn. Alana’s papers ruffle slightly. Holden wonders what she was reading. 

“I have ulterior motives for inviting you here,” she says, apropos of nothing. Holden stills. “Regarding something Dr. Carr said.”

His neck heats. “Ah, I’m not sure what she told you, but—”

“Relax, Holden— Wendy had nothing but nice things to say about you. It sounds like you’re maybe a little headstrong, sometimes, but she believes in you and your work. To be honest, it reminded me of my relationship with Will Graham, and that’s what caught my attention.”

It’s not quite dread that Holden’s feeling, but it’s close. He shifts his grip on the wine glass in his hand, and the images flood in fast, unbidden: it’d be easy enough to break off a sizable shard, lunge across the coffee table and slash her throat, and he wouldn’t even need to cut back through the house, just run out the back doors and circle around to his car. Though that still leaves Margot as a loose end, and Morgan, who knows he’s their guest tonight, _shit_ — 

Alana’s still speaking. “You were there for Jack’s last moments, but you were also there for Will’s, and Hannibal’s. If you’re amenable, I’d like to talk to you about that. I’m assuming you haven’t been assigned a counselor by the FBI?” 

Despite his pulse pricking hot and fast in his veins, he keeps his composure. He’s old hat at this, after all, isn’t he? “No ma’am, they’ve been a… a little busy.” They’d rubber-stamped him and shoved him back into active duty as soon as he’d gotten back, more like. Granted, Holden hadn’t put up a fight, delighted to be doing something other than staring at his bedroom wall, mentally replaying Crawford’s death a thousand times.

She nods as he confirms her suspicions. “I’m not offering my services,” she clarifies. “I stopped taking on patients when I became the director for the BSHCI, and had… other things to occupy me. I retired when my son graduated college, though I still hold my place on the board.” Holden waits, because that seems to be the thing to do. “What I propose are simple… conversations. Just talking. I can’t imagine there are many people you can go to with your more personal thoughts concerning your profession.”

Conversations? It sure sounds like she’s offering to be his therapist, if in everything but name. But Holden is a complete stranger to her; it doesn’t make any sense for her to insert herself in his life, unless, maybe, she misses her involvement with the BSU and its cases. But she doesn’t strike him as an ambulance chaser. 

Holden is impressed by the steadiness of his own voice when he speaks. “I mean, there’s Wendy, and Bill.” The more he thinks about it, though, he has to admit it’s a tempting offer. Even with Bill, who is used to Holden’s odder qualities, Holden has to edit his brain-to-mouth speech substantially, navigate a minefield of what might push Bill too far, might crack Holden’s image irreparably. God knows he’s tiptoeing through their interviews with the convicts. But Alana’s conducted her fair share of interviews with psychopaths, at the BSHCI. This isn’t a woman who would shock easily.

He redirects his sentence. “Can I ask… why? I mean— you don’t know me,” he says, because there’s no other way to put it. “And it’s been a while since you associated with the FBI, hasn’t it?”

She watches him, considering, but Holden again has the sensation she’s not really seeing _him_. It’s a long moment before she gives him an answer. “I have a… professional curiosity, that I’ve long since decided not to ignore.” 

Maybe it’s not the BSU she misses. Maybe it’s— Holden just barely stops the hitch in his breath— Will Graham. She’d known him, considered him a friend, even at his most unstable. And she’d failed him, right when he had needed her most. If she’s looking for parallels, and looking to assuage her guilt, Holden would fit that box very nicely, wouldn’t he?

But it has the potential to be mutually beneficial, because Holden is his fathers’ son. If Holden could talk to Alana, _really_ talk about the things he’s seen, the ideas he has, she might actually have something to say back. 

After all, Will has always had Hannibal to debate with. Who does Holden have? 

But it’s playing with fire. One misplaced word and she could ruin everything. He can see Will’s stern look of disapproval in his mind’s eye, just as much as he can see Hannibal’s curiosity.

“Thank you for the offer, ma’am, but I’m not sure I should,” he declines. “It’s, uh, all still kind of fresh, and we’re, well—” 

Alana’s merciful. “That’s perfectly fine, Holden, there’s no need to explain yourself. If you change your mind, though, do let me know. I—” 

She cuts off as a door closes, somewhere, and voices float down the hall towards them, and when Margot finally reappears, beaming, she has Morgan in arm. “Look who the cat dragged in.”

The atmosphere shifts entirely as Alana faces her family, solemnity for joy. If Holden weren’t sitting, he might have gotten vertigo. Alana doesn’t continue her sentence, instead smiling up at Morgan as he dips in to kiss her on the cheek. “Hi Mom.” 

“Hello sweetheart. How was your day?”

“Fine, thanks. Reeve’s running me ragged trying to coerce me into staying, but even he knows a lost cause.” He turns to Holden and Holden rises automatically, reaching out a hand for Morgan to shake. “Holden, good to see you again.” 

“And you.” This close, Holden’s reminded again of their aesthetic similarities. He wonders what Morgan’s thought of it.

Morgan takes Alana’s wine glass and gestures for Holden to sit again. “Want me to top off yours?” he asks, and Holden fumbles an okay. He catches that look on Alana’s face again, the one from yesterday, but it’s gone when he faces her fully. Margot settles beside her, which leaves Morgan to take the seat beside Holden when he returns, making it look easy to carry all four wine glasses in his splayed fingers. _He has very large hands,_ Holden registers absently as he accepts his, his stomach clenching.

The silence as they drink isn’t quite uncomfortable, but Holden still senses it’s his turn to break it. “Alana was telling me about your philanthropic work?” 

Morgan does a good show of looking bashful. “I’m sure she was.” 

“Because you should be proud,” Margot insists, then addresses Holden. “Right now they’re working on building schools so the village children have a safe place to go during the day. There’s a terrible large sex trafficking rash down there.” 

Morgan nods, expression sincere. “My grandfather started the mission at the turn of the century, and we’re doing our best to continue his work, after it was left unattended for so long,” _by my father,_ Morgan doesn’t say, and Holden wonders if the man’s name is ever mentioned in their house. “That’s why I prefer to be there rather than the States. I’ve grown quite close with the families.” He tips his glass to Alana and Margot with a wink. “As much as I love my own, that is.” 

“That’s very admirable,” Holden says. It earns him a smile, though it’s not quite as cat-like as the one from the funeral. Irrationally, it leaves him feeling a little cold. 

“You’ll be back there in no time,” Margot tells her son. “You’re just here until—”

“What about yourself, Holden?” Alana interrupts, but Margot falls silent without batting an eye. “What do you do when you’re not stopping psychopaths?”

Holden blinks, but hurries to answer. “Ah, that’s kind of all I do. I started off in hostage negotiation, but, uh, there was a big gap in the literature about how to _prevent_ these incidents rather than just react to them. Lucky for us there were the bones of the old BSU to build on.” 

“Very creative eulogy, by the way,” Margot smiles around the rim of her glass. It’s a light tease, so Holden takes it with a sheepish smile. 

“I, ah. Panicked a little.” Holden rubs at his neck. “I’d never given one before.”

“Well you did better than my first,” Morgan tells him. At Holden’s look of question, he explains. “One of my professors was killed my junior year of university. Botched mugging. They asked me to speak at the service because he was an advisor of mine, and plus it looked good for the school’s image to get the Verger heir onstage. Unfortunately for them, I stammered through the whole thing, and ended up breaking down in tears before I could finish.” He says it like he’s embarrassed, but in a way that Holden’s eager to reassure him, offer consolation, though he wasn’t even there at the speech. Does he have this effect on everyone? Or is Holden some exception?

It’s probably everyone, he decides. Alana and Margot are looking at their son like he hung the moon. 

“I’m sorry,” Holden offers, but Morgan shakes his head. 

“I just wish I could’ve caught the bastard who did it. At least you have that comfort, right? You got to see justice for Jack Crawford. You’re bringing justice to a lot of people, doing what you do. Do you enjoy it?”

 _Yes_ . The word is on the tip of his tongue, and Holden almost, _almost_ says it, but he catches himself just in time. But it’s like he might as well have, with the knowing look that creeps across Morgan’s face. Something settles in the other man’s expression, but before Holden can try to backtrack, he’s saved by Alana.

“Alright, that’s enough, Morgan. Holden is our guest; we didn’t invite him here to interrogate him.” Holden takes another gulp of wine for his dry throat as she speaks. He needs to slow down, because if he’s going to drink every time he feels flustered, it’s going to be a very dizzy night.

“Of course. I’m sorry,” Morgan directs to him. 

Holden shakes his head, towards both him and Alana. “That’s okay. I, um, consider what I do very rewarding.”

“Well that’s enough _murder_ talk before dinner,” Margot tuts, though there’s a glint in her eyes Holden can’t name. “Come, let’s move to the table, I think I smell food. Holden, how long have you lived in Virginia?” 

After that, the evening slips by easily. They very deliberately steer away from any discussion of Holden’s work, which Holden both appreciates and wonders at, given this family’s history. Mason is never hinted at again either. But the wine flows aplenty, and dinner is wonderful, filet mignon and roasted potatoes and grilled vegetables prepared by a chef Holden never spots— “you’d think we’d be a meatless household after Hannibal’s little party trick, but I like steak too much to give it up,” Margot laughs, perfectly casual, like having unknowingly participated in cannibalism is par for the course in their life— and the conversation is unaffected, ranging from art to theatre to Margot’s horses and, briefly, the Verger pigs.

“There are only a few left on the property,” Alana says. Margot throws back the contents of her glass and elaborates, “I tried to get rid of them, because I could never stand the squealing, but after so many years, the silence is worse.” Then she asks Morgan to pass the salt, and the topic is changed.

Holden finds himself relaxing into the evening, even laughing at Margot and Morgan’s jokes. He loses his jacket at some point. By the time the night is drawing to a close, Holden is doubting his initial apprehension. This is an ordinary— well, obscenely wealthy, but ordinary— family, with a scarred past they’ve put firmly behind them. Maybe his intuition is getting rusty, sending out false alerts. Maybe he’s just paranoid.

When they finish dessert— tiny chocolate mousse cakes with white chocolate curls on top— Holden’s feeling more than a little buzzed. He offers to help clear the table when the women stand, but Alana and Margot wave him away as they breeze off in the direction of the kitchen, leaving him and Morgan alone for the first time. Holden hopes his blush can be blamed on the wine.

Morgan nudges him with an elbow, and flashes the edge of a pack of cigarettes out of his inside jacket pocket. “You smoke?” he asks. Holden shakes his head. “Join me anyways, the stars out here are radical.” 

They make their way back through the halls to the parlor, then through the glass doors to the terrace. It’s near pitch dark out, save for the soft light from the parlor’s lamps at their backs. “We can’t see the stars that well in Napa— too many houses that keep their lights on too late,” Morgan explains as they wander along the stones. “It’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked this place. It was the house they brought me home to, you know. Maybe I’ve spent more time elsewhere, but I’ve got a lot of memories of wobbling around this place.” He winks. “There are not one but _two_ busts in there held together with Krazy Glue after I knocked them over playing frisbee inside. Ma— Margot made me pinky swear not to tell Mom, but I doubt she would have cared. Hell, I’m sure she already knows. That woman doesn’t miss a thing.”

He sticks a cigarette between his lips, and there’s the quick white flash of a lighter illuminating his face. 

“Must have been fun when you were a teenager,” Holden says. His words are slurring only a little, though Morgan’s are still crystal clear. But Holden’s always had a miserably low alcohol tolerance anyway; many a time has Bill shoved him into a taxi with an eye roll so hard Holden’s shocked he hasn’t given himself an aneurysm. 

Morgan grins around the cigarette, and— there it is. The smile from yesterday. Holden must be staring, but he can’t tear his eyes away. Morgan’s rather handsome, his brain chimes. He looks like a… a jaguar. Smart, sharp. _Dangerous_.

Skilled at camouflage. “Nah, I got pretty good at sneaking out. Big old house like this, you learn real fast how to move around without making any noise.” He exhales smoke. “Now, look up.”

Holden obeys, tilting his face up to the sky. The visible stars are nice, but they’re not extraordinarily different from what he sees most nights in motel parking lots. But Morgan suddenly disappears from his side, moving back into the parlor, where he flicks off the lamps and they plummet into complete darkness. 

Holden’s “holy shit” escapes him softly. As his eyes adjust, the celestial light floods in gradually, and the stars _are_ radical— there’s the cloudy gash of the Milky Way emerging from the inky maw of the sky, and it might be the wine, but every star seems to twinkle ten times brighter than usual. Holden hears Morgan’s low chuckle as he returns, though he can’t quite make out the other man; only the bright red butt of his cigarette bobbing through the air lets Holden know where he is. 

“Right? You ever seen a sky like this?” 

“When I was little,” Holden answers, because he’s not as unworldly as Morgan makes him feel, and there’s a sudden flare of _want_ in his chest to prove himself. “We traveled a lot, and mostly stayed on the edges of towns. My dad—” he halts, some less-buzzed inner voice warning him sternly to take care with his words, “is a very private man.”

They’re quiet for a while as they stargaze. When Morgan speaks again, his voice is low enough that Holden takes a small step closer to hear better. “I really did like your eulogy,” he says. “Did you like Crawford? Mom and Margot don’t talk about their past much.”

This time, the truth doesn’t trip on his tongue. “To be honest? I hated the guy.” This earns a bark of a laugh from Morgan, and a pleased smile tug at Holden’s mouth. “Felt like I was on eggshells the whole time I knew him. Like— he fucked up, you know? But he couldn’t let it go, couldn’t let us get on with our lives. Uh, the BSU, I mean,” he backtracks. “We were doing just fine till he showed up again.”

Morgan’s silhouette is a pale line now: the straight slope of his nose, the cut of his jaw. The bob of his Adam’s apple. 

“I get that. I’ve got my dad hanging over me like a fucking guillotine. But, like, I’m more than my last name, you know? That’s why I liked what you said. That thing about keeping names alive? Footnotes of history— very poetic, by the way, you shouldn’t sell yourself short with the whole self-deprecation thing— but I want to make sure that the first person anyone thinks of when they hear the name _Verger_ is me. I want to live a life that… that _banishes_ my father to the shadows, where he belongs.”

Holden stares. He gets it— when he looks at Morgan, he sees a man born to stand in the sun. Even under all these stars, Holden’s eyes gravitate to him like he’s the light source. Holden feels suddenly scraggly, a weed finding consciousness in a sidewalk crack, and he wonders what it might be like to feel that warmth. 

Morgan is staring back, he realizes suddenly, and Holden flinches away, an echo of his behavior at the funeral. Direct sunlight can be blinding. 

“They’ll remember your name,” Morgan says, hushed. It rings like an oath, and the air around them seems to quiver. “Not Crawford’s. I guarantee you that.”

 _No_ , that little voice hisses, _you’re not supposed to be in the sun._ Holden is a creature of the shadows. Born, raised, molded. “I—”

“They don’t see you,” Morgan tells him. “But I do. I know what you are.”

The ground gives way beneath Holden’s feet. Or maybe it’s just the wine, or the gaping chasm that’s opened inside of him— nevertheless, Holden grapples for invisible purchase. “What?” 

“Don’t play dumb, Holden, it doesn’t suit you.”

“I— I don’t—”

Morgan nears, the red hot starburst of his cigarette streaking closer, like a meteor, but Holden only feels the heat of Morgan’s skin. “I know you aren’t what you pretend to be. You’re like all these stars. No one can see you in all the artificial light, but if they take that all away... you glow. I can see your glow, Holden.” 

His buzz is evaporating fast, and Holden can feel the chill of the night air creeping its hand inside his shirt, sliding up his chest in a cold sweat, towards his throat. Stealing his words. 

Morgan shifts back on his heels, and when he speaks again, it’s like he never said a word out of place. “You should see the stars in Brazil, though. When we’re in the jungle, and especially on the night of a new moon, it gets so dark you can’t see your own hand in front of your face. But in the clearings by the rivers, the stars are brighter than any electricity.” He exhales, and Holden can smell the smoke as it blooms, unseen, in the air. “You’d be surprised how easy it is to get lost out there. And the jungle is so thick no one bothers to go looking. Spiders, snakes, wasps as big as your head. We tie ropes to each other so we don’t lose track, but it’s not unusual for those ropes to go slack, sometimes. You don’t know what else is out there.” 

Holden has the sudden sensation he’s stumbled right into a spider’s web. This whole evening was just silk threads being woven all around him, so fine he couldn’t even see them. _Won’t you walk into my parlor? said the spider to the fly._ Holden let his guard down. He’s made a terrible mistake. An irreversible mistake. 

“I think I should be going,” he hears himself say. Morgan doesn’t follow as his feet carry him jerkily back into the house, feeling his way blindly along the furniture in the dark, towards Alana and Margot’s voices. He barely registers telling them goodbye, sees their smiling faces, makes promises he doesn’t intend to keep to visit them again, no he can’t stay the night, he’s got an early day tomorrow, _thank you for the offer, yeah I’m good to drive, I’ll be fine—_

His blood keeps rushing in his ears even as he trips into the driver’s seat of his car, and he realizes he’s forgotten his jacket, but there’s no way in hell he’s going back in there. He tries his best to leave at a normal pace, keeping his eyes fixed ahead until he clears the long drive, but he swears he can feel Morgan’s eyes on him with every turn of the tires. 

Fuck. Just as he gets his first taste of freedom, of power, it all goes slipping through his fingers in the blink of an eye. _What has he done?_

He has to pull over and sit on the empty highway for a long time before his hands stop shaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I know what you are”
> 
> “Say it. Say it out loud.”
> 
> “A fuckin nerd”
> 
> (also: margot’s outfit inspired by her look in 3x06 bc i die.)


	3. Chapter 3

Holden remembers the best gift he ever received.

His birthday was a sacred day in their little family. They never much celebrated Will or Hannibal’s— they’d never told him why, specifically, but Holden suspected birthdays weren’t happy affairs in either childhood, and both men preferred to celebrate their anniversary than honor days they had spent without the other’s company. But Holden’s birthday was treated with more importance than any other holiday, his fathers organizing trips and tickets to shows and planning elaborate meals and trying to outdo themselves with every year. 

Maybe they were making up for their own lost birthdays, or making amends for the year Holden had existed without them, or maybe time had just become such a precious commodity that they wanted to teach Holden to appreciate the significance of each year that had passed with them safe, unscathed, and together. Either way, Holden looked forward to the day.

It was his fifteenth birthday, and he and his fathers were spending the summer near Vienna, when Holden came downstairs to his favorite breakfast and a train ticket waiting for him on the kitchen table. They traveled the three hours to the Ennstal Alps, had a picnic lunch by a river and wandered the village square and the shops there, before his fathers led him to the Admont Abbey. 

Libraries were sanctuaries. In their life of caution and seclusion, Holden never had much in the way of friends— if he made any companions of the local kids, he usually had to leave them behind in a year or so as his family relocated, so eventually he stopped trying. But he did have books. Books he could take with him. Books let him see the parts of the world he was still forbidden from. Books let him have conversations outside his fathers— because, let’s face it, Holden was a teenager, and sometimes you just needed to talk to someone or go someplace separate from your parents, and it wasn’t like Holden could go ambling off. 

So began his fascination with libraries: a constant in every town they moved to. It became a game to find a library that surpassed the last, and after the marketplace panic when he was little, libraries became a more official sanctuary: if Holden got lost or separated, he should seek out the nearest library, and his parents would know to find him there. Since police stations were out of the question. 

He already knew where they were headed, but that didn’t stop his excitement. Admont Abbey had been high on their list of libraries to visit for years— the largest monastic library in the world, a piece of history preserved in the crisp mountain air and untouched by the war. By the time they reached the Abbey, the sun was low in the valleys of the mountains encircling them, but Hannibal had paid a groundworker to let them enter past the usual visiting hours, and a delicate peace hung over the Abbey as they entered. 

The interior was a stark contrast to the fading light outside. The library had been painted a brilliant white and gold, with pastel pink and blue angels floating high above, and Holden stood in the center of the hall and craned back his head to take in the towering shelves. Older libraries were trickier to explore, with their rules of what you could and couldn’t touch, but Holden still reveled in them, closing his eyes and breathing in the familiar must of old pages that even the wealthiest, most glamorous libraries couldn’t erase. 

He heard the footsteps of his fathers fading as they wandered down another hall and left him to his private perusal. Holden stepped further into the main gallery, slipping past the velvet ropes to hover his fingers over the ivory book spines, so many older than he could fathom. He had been born into a world still reeling from the aftermath of destruction, both global and private. But still, these things had survived. 

His fingers left the shelves as he came to the foot of a statue. He’d read about these, too: The Four Last Things, a quartet of bronzed Baroque sculptures depicting the Christian soul’s journey in the afterlife. They were positioned in each corner of the center hall and polished to the point of gleaming, looking as if they had been finished yesterday rather than the 18th century. First was Death, then Judgment, then passage onto eternity in either Hell or Heaven. But Holden had unintentionally gone counter-clockwise, and found himself at the foot of Heaven, the last statue, first.

Heaven was the climax of the trials of the soul, and the statue you were supposed to aspire to, and therefore she was beautiful: the virtuous bride with her eyes raised as an angel lifted her heavenward. She held her own heart in her hand in offering, self-assured and unafraid. A few paces away, Hell, in contrast, was aggressive and fearful, its male subject resisting the devilish monster gripping his legs, dragging him downwards to a dragon’s mouth. He was surrounded by the cardinal sins, but he wielded a dagger in a futile attempt to fend off his fate. Holden’s footsteps echoed in the cavernous hall until he found the statue he’d most wanted to see.

To his left, Death was an old man dwarfed by the enormous winged skeleton waiting at his shoulder, but Holden didn’t pay them much attention. Instead, he was captivated by the figure before him: Judgment— or Resurrection, depending on who you asked. The sculpture depicted a young man, still half-covered in his burial shroud, with his vacated grave in shambles beneath his feet. Christ waited above him, while the Admont devil crouched at his feet. The young man stared downward at the little creature, wary of what it could reveal from the book between them, the book containing the contents of the young man’s life. 

The viewer didn’t know what the man’s sentence would be— damnation, or salvation— and they would never know. And neither would the young man. He was suspended in stone, waiting forever to hear how his soul will be judged. 

He had Holden’s curls. 

Holden couldn’t look away.

And, now, he can’t look away from _this_ gift, either. The gift he’s been given in the church where Jack Crawford had been mourned, the church where Holden met the Vergers. The gift that just might be a damn close second to Resurrection.

The flash of a camera startles Holden from his reverie. 

The church has been recast as a crime scene. There are techs everywhere, picking through the pews and photographing and examining the body— _bodies_ — and searching for a scrap of evidence that Holden knows they won’t find. The local cops are here too, the ones called when the priest made the discovery, but they’ve been sequestered off to the walls and now stand as a rapt audience beneath the stained glass windows, leaving room for Bill and Holden to take command. 

It’s the first crime scene in a long time that’s entirely in their jurisdiction, with no Crawford or Shepard hovering over their shoulders, and it feels like the old days, even though everything couldn’t possibly be more different. 

Bill is off talking to the priest, so Holden makes his way up the aisle to the corpse. The body is mounted in front of the altar, where Jack’s flowering portrait had stood just a couple days before. It’s a white male, standing like a mannequin, or a statue, with his head bowed and arms positioned low, hands propped away from his body with hanger wire, leaving his palms facing outward. He’s dressed in a white cassock that’s stained dark red around the collar, implying the victim had been wearing it or dressed in it before the killer did… _that_ to his face.

Because there are two. Two faces. Someone has skinned the face off a second, bodiless, victim, and layered it on top of the first like a gruesome Halloween mask. The edges are less than smooth, lacking any surgical precision, and you can see the first victim’s eyes through the sightless sockets of the second: they had been pinned wide open, staring out. 

There’s a movement in his periphery, and Holden watches a tech scurry over to Bill to give a cursory analysis. Bill’s mouth blanches at the edges as it thin to a line. He gives the tech a nod before starting to cross the floor, and Holden turns back so he won’t be caught staring. It’s harder to hear the creaking floor now that there are so many people moving around the space. 

“Thorvaldsen’s _Christus_ _,”_ Holden says as Bill joins him. He doesn’t have to look to know he’s being met with a critical eyebrow, so he explains. “It’s a famous statue of Christ, but not the one in Brazil; though it’s probably in the lobby of every church in the western hemisphere. It has an interesting story, actually— originally, Thorvaldsen’s clay draft had its arms raised to Heaven, but when Thorvaldsen came into his studio the next day he found the clay had slumped overnight, in the heat, so now Christ’s arms were lower and his palms were open to the viewer, rather than God. Thorvaldsen figured it was fate, so he kept it. That’s the pose,” he gestures to the body. “Thorvaldsen’s _Christus_ _.”_

A pause, before Bill huffs. “I swear, who needs an encyclopedia when I’ve got you.” Holden bites down on a smile. “And you’re just as much a dead weight to lug around.” 

“Hey!” 

Bill doesn’t chuckle, because this is a crime scene, but there’s still the laughing glint in his eyes that Holden can read so well, and Holden knows Bill’s missed this just as much as he has. But there’s the now-familiar knot in the pit of his stomach that’s telling him it’s not theirs to keep just yet. Someone can still take this away. The someone who gave Holden this gift. 

Because Holden knows it’s for him. He’d awakened that morning feeling like his head had been taxidermied and his nerves flayed, and not just from his hangover. He’d replayed last night over and over as he went through his morning, every word spoken, every track of Morgan’s eyes. Even as he’d brushed his teeth and drank his coffee, he’d felt jittery, like a hunted mouse. Like _prey_ , which is not something he’s used to feeling. He’s been flinching at shadows, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone had rang with directions to the scene, even though he _knew_ it was coming. 

He’d been _waiting;_ Morgan didn’t seem like someone who took his time. What is more impatient than the sun rising to chase away the shadows?

“Priest didn’t see anything before he left for the night, and neither did the janitor,” Bill recounts. “We don’t have IDs yet, but the vics are twins. Grafted onto each other.”

“That’s dark.” 

“No shit.”

Knowing it would be too obvious to close his eyes, Holden instead lets them unfocus a bit as he coaxes his imagination to life. He sees Morgan in the dark of the empty church, with no stars to light his path, but like he’d told Holden, he knew how to move in the lightless jungle. And, like through the halls of Verger Estate, his feet wouldn’t have made a sound.

The display would have already been made, fully dressed with the wire under the arms to keep their position— all ready but the face. He imagines Morgan brandishing a knife over a severed head— too bulky to bring the entire second body, easier to handle a head on ice, or in a bag— and sliding it down beneath the forehead, severing tendons, slicing muscle from bone. Laying it gently over the skin of the first. Identical twins. Returned to one zygote in death. 

Had Morgan made the kills after their dinner, or before? How ready had he been, when Holden hadn’t suspected a thing? _Stupid, stupid._ He should’ve known better, shouldn’t have lowered his guard, but he’d thought the past had burned with Crawford.

“ _Christus_ _,”_ he hears Bill say, and Holden follows the voice to resurface. “So our killer is… welcoming someone? Us?”

Holden nods with a sharp inhale and resists the urge to scrub a hand down his face. “Obviously it’s not a random killing, since they chose this church, and so soon after the funeral. It’s an invitation. To start a…” he looks at the body, the eyes staring back. “Conversation.”

“The Ripper’s dead not even a month and we’ve already got our first fanboy,” Bill grumbles. 

It’s not, but Holden can’t explain how he knows, so he just hums in agreement. “Looks like.” Inside, though, his wheels are turning. His skittish uncertainty is slowly icing over, transforming into something more akin to… resolve.

He didn’t dance through that circle of hell with Crawford just for someone to get one step ahead of him now. There’s no calling his fathers for help this time, though— for one, he has no idea where they are, knowing they’ll send a postcard when they find somewhere to settle. And second, well. This isn’t their fight. 

This one’s Holden’s. 

He and Bill had driven separately, so Holden watches discreetly from his driver’s seat as Bill pulls from the parking lot and motors down the street, before he steps out again and jogs to a payphone down the sidewalk. He feels slightly absurd giving the operator the name, but they of course don’t comment. 

He picks at a scuff on the number panel as the phone rings. There’s a Carter campaign sticker half-covering the pound key, but his eyes are scratched out. 

A secretary picks up, and then Holden is patched through. 

“Hello?” a voice answers. 

“Dr. Bloom? It’s Holden Ford. I— I was wondering if you were still available for that conversation?” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the Admont Abbey is a very real, very cool place!! And [The Four Last Things](https://www.stiftadmont.at/en/library/the-abbey-library/sculptures-and-reliefs/the-last-four-things) statues are HELLA representative of certain characters in this series lol I couldn’t resist. bonus points if you can guess who is who


	4. Chapter 4

The autopsy later the next day confirms what they already know: their vics are identical twins, mutilated post-mortem, and the church held no trace of the killer. 

“Reagan and Anthony Gardener,” Holden reads off the report. “Age 36. Official cause of death is asphyxiation.”

“Local boys?” Wendy asks from her perch on Holden’s desk. Bill’s leaning beside her, his arms crossed over his chest, and Holden is reminded again why he chose the desk not enclosed in an office: he likes the communal spaces, being in the center of the action, with Wendy and Bill gravitating to him from their distinct orbits. Plus he doesn’t like having his back against a wall.

He scans the family statement and shakes his head. “They were born in Virginia, but Anthony’s a longtime California resident. He was coming to town for their mother’s retirement party a couple nights ago. According to Reagan’s girlfriend, he went to pick Anthony up from the airport, but neither of them ever made it back.”

“Mom or girlfriend didn’t report it?” Bill asks.

“Girlfriend figured they’d gone to a bar— apparently it wasn’t unusual for them to get a motel when they had too much to drink. As for mom, it was supposed to be a surprise; she didn’t even know Anthony was in town.”

“That still narrows down the field a bit. Not many people who would know those travel plans,” Wendy says.

Bill shrugs. “Unless it was a random nab from the airport. It’s a common place for family reunions.”

“But what’s the likelihood of finding identical twins? Assuming our killer knew what he was looking for. It’s a pretty specific image,” Wendy points out. She turns to the whiteboard behind Holden, where the photographs from the crime scene are displayed, secured with their multicolored magnets. There are a smattering of corny location magnets like you’d find at truck stops mixed in with the standard-issue office ones: it had started as a joke between Bill and Holden on the road, but their collection is growing past excusable levels. It’s a (probably inappropriate) stark contrast to the bloody photographs, but Holden personally thinks it adds a nice touch of levity. 

Early on he’d wondered if Wendy would disapprove, but she’d shown up one Monday and stuck a sunglasses-wearing Wally the Green Monster on the board without a word. 

The bespectacled magnet is currently holding up a close-up of the merged faces. “Who’s on top?” Wendy asks. 

Another glance to the report and Holden recites, “Anthony. He’s the elder by two and a half minutes.”

“Again, pretty intimate details.”

Bill concedes. “Still could be any number of acquaintances— friends, friends of friends, coworkers, secretaries. The question we have to ask is what our guy’s next move is. Is he targeting twins in particular? Is he some kind of religious zealot?” 

“Twins were once considered demonic omens in certain faiths,” Wendy says. “Often the mothers would keep one and take the other to the forest to die, sometimes as a sacrifice to appease some malevolent spirit.” 

But Holden’s shaking his head again. “This doesn’t feel aggressive, though. He’s _wearing_ his brother’s face, not denying it, or trying to destroy it. There has to be something in there that’s a more direct reference to us,” he says. “ _Christus_ is placed in the lobbies of ten thousand churches in North America because the pose is _welcoming._ Our unsub is opening a dialogue, but what is he trying to say? What is he trying to get _us_ to say?”

Abruptly, Wendy stands. “ _See,_ not say.” She takes the report from Holden and starts flipping through its pages, like the answer will jump out at her. “He wants us to see something. It’s a brother seeing through his brother’s eyes.” 

“But is he trying to see through ours, or trying to get us to see through his?” Bill asks. 

_Morgan is older. Which makes Holden the one wearing the mask._

Holden’s never been accused of being blind before. He can’t help but bristle. 

“A killer looking for empathy?” _Or a friend._

“The second body is still missing. Maybe that’s who he’s cast himself as,” Holden says, before glancing at his watch. The autopsy report had come in later than expected, and he’s got rush-hour traffic to contend with. Alana hadn’t wasted any time after his phone call to the BSHCI yesterday: she’s scheduled him in for this evening, after business hours. He’d called the hospital from the payphone to avoid having Margot or Morgan answering the phone, but Alana had likewise avoided meeting near the estate, for some reason; he still hasn’t figured out her insistence on secrecy regarding their _conversations_ , but it’s certainly at the top of his priority list. He has to figure out how much she knows about her son’s… _proclivities._ And if that means she knows about Holden’s. “I’m sorry, I have to get going.”

Holden’s usually the last one out the door at the end of the night, so, naturally, his partners look shocked. Bill raises his brow. “I’d ask if you had a date, but—”

Before he can finish his insult, there’s a rap of knuckles against a doorframe, and all three of them turn to look. They don’t get many visitors down here. 

When he sees who it is, though, Holden’s stomach plummets. “Morgan,” he says, and his voice cracks pathetically. “Hi.” 

Morgan Verger stands in the doorway. “Hi,” he replies with an easy smile. “I hope it’s alright I’m here, the front desk just told me to go on through.” Seems the Verger name opens a lot of doors, even doors that are usually locked, and the elevators beyond them. Morgan lifts his arm, which Holden sees is draped with familiar grey fabric. “You forgot your jacket last night.”

Bill and Wendy’s heads swivel to Holden, and he can feel his face burn. Even though he has nothing to be embarrassed about, he reminds himself. It was just dinner, and dinner with _all_ the Vergers, not just Morgan. “Uh, thanks. You didn’t need to do that.” _All the way from Baltimore._ Couldn’t Alana have brought it to their meeting? Does Morgan know Holden’s meeting with his mother? But then Morgan’s eyes flick over Holden’s head to the whiteboard, and _ah, but of course—_ killers like to return to the scenes of their crimes, don’t they? And Holden is as much of Morgan’s crime scene as the church, as the Gardener boys. 

The whiteboard is all but an altar to Morgan’s display. This is why killers come back: they want to see all the attention they’re getting. Want to see how they’ve baffled the masses with their cleverness. Maybe Morgan is curious to see if Holden’s caught on. 

“Plus I wanted to see where you worked,” Morgan says as he steps further into the office. He looks to survey the rest of the room, politely interested. “Neat place.” Like it’s Holden’s apartment.

All of a sudden Holden imagines Morgan Verger standing in his living room, his broad shoulders taking up space, _Holden’s_ space, and fuck, his face must be tomato red now. He tries to distract from his awkwardness by crossing to meet Morgan halfway to take the jacket, only realizing too late that now he’s too close with no reason to be. 

Morgan gives him just the _slightest_ edge of that cat-like smile, and _winks,_ before looking around him to address Bill and Wendy. He doesn’t move away from Holden, but instead shifts so that their shoulders are just shy of touching, effectively trapping him, because it would be far too noticeable for Holden to jump away now. 

“Dr. Carr, good to see you again,” Morgan greets. “And…?”

Holden remembers Morgan and Bill haven’t met yet, so he fumbles though the introduction. “Morgan Verger, Agent Bill Tench.”

Bill doesn’t move from his spot, but he gives a lazy two-fingered wave as Wendy speaks. “Please, Morgan, just call me Wendy.”

Holden looks to Bill, to find Bill staring right back at him. There’s a grimace tugging down the corners of his mouth, but his gaze darts away when it finds Holden’s. “Bill is just fine, for me.” 

Morgan bows his head in thanks, and Holden gets the fleeting impression of a vampire who’s just been granted entry. Or those old fairy tales Tėtis had read to him when he was little, about never giving a fae your name. He swallows drily, and glances at his watch again. Now he’s really going to be late.

“I was just leaving,” he tells Morgan meaningfully, some protective flare making him not want to leave him here alone with Bill and Wendy. 

Morgan catches on. “Can I walk you out?” he asks, and somehow that’s worse, but Holden consents.

“Yeah, uh. Sure. Just let me get my stuff, and I, ah. I can meet you in the hall?”

The other man nods. “Okay. Good to see you, Wendy. Bill.” They say goodbye and he steps out into the hall, and Holden scrambles to his desk, grabbing a few files at random and shoving them into his briefcase. He throws on the jacket he’d worn to work that day— not the grey one, that one he balls up in his fist— and fights the urge to smooth a hand through his hair before he finally looks up to face Bill and Wendy, who have been watching him the whole time.

Bill’s brow is furrowed. Wendy just looks… _amused._

“Is it me, or—” Bill starts.

Wendy finishes for him. “You two could be brothers.” 

Holden’s brain short-circuits. His partners are smart; sometimes shrewdly so. So how could they be dancing right over the _very obvious connection_ to their crime scene and be _completely missing it?_ A voice chants loudly in his head _don’t look at the board don’t look at the board_ so the only thing he manages to say is, “I’m an only child.”

Wendy laughs and starts to go back to her own desk, while Bill’s squinting at something to the left of Holden’s shoe. “Dopplegängers aside, it sounds like you’re fitting in nicely with the Vergers,” she says.

“I really do have to go,” Holden replies, a little desperately. “Call me if anything pops up?”

“Yet another round of the waiting game,” Bill grumbles, but Holden’s already scurrying out the door.

He finds Morgan by the elevators, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. He arches an eyebrow when Holden approaches. “Hi,” he says again, and presses the button for them.

“Hi,” Holden echoes. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He hadn’t expected to see Morgan again so soon, had _hoped_ he wouldn’t, at least not until he had time to figure out his next move, and now they’re stepping into an elevator together. Alone. 

Holden doesn’t have a weapon. His briefcase would be too light to do anything but knock Morgan against the silver walls if he swung it, and risk angering him. But his mind flashes back to the masked twins. It really hadn’t felt like a threat. It was a _gift._ An _offering._

The doors slide closed behind them. Holden gulps again, then cringes, praying it wasn’t audible. 

“I’m sorry if I freaked you out the other night,” Morgan says gently. Holden can’t help but start a little— it’s a tone of voice Holden hasn’t yet heard him use. “I was just trying to say hello, from one, well, one of _us_ to the other. I hope that came across with,” he takes his hand from his pocket and waves it, palm upward, fingers held together, an echo of _Christus,_ “You know.” 

It’s all but an admission, even though Holden already _knew._ How does he respond? 

Morgan must see Holden’s uncertainty on his face, because he takes a step closer, which sends Holden a step back. Morgan spreads his hands wider, like he’s trying to calm a spooked horse. 

“It’s okay. I’m just trying to get a feel for you, yeah? And maybe you can get a feel for me.” A smirk spreads slow across his mouth. 

Holden realizes with a start that Morgan is _flirting._

His collar is suddenly tight. 

But then the elevator dings and the doors open to the main floor of Quantico. Holden tries to walk normally, but he can’t quite remember how his limbs are supposed to move, and he feels clumsy and gangly as Morgan trails after him, calm as you please. 

They make it through the office without incident. If he weren’t so nervous, he might laugh. The cannibals’ son and the psychopath’s son sauntering through the heart of Quantico, a building stuffed full of some of the sharpest minds in the country, and yet no one knows. Is it really because they just don’t notice, or because they don’t _want_ to?

Is this how Hannibal had felt? Will?

Sunlight bursts across his vision as they enter the glass-doored lobby and Holden’s eyes take a second to readjust as he shoves open the door. When he can focus again, he immediately trips on the threshold— Morgan’s hand finds his arm before Holden can go sprawling, but Holden hardly registers it. Because there’s a woman with red hair on the front steps of Quantico. 

She hasn’t seen him yet, as she’s looking down at a notepad she’s holding in her black-gloved hands, covered despite the warm day. But then Morgan’s asking him, “You okay?” and she follows the sound, ringlets bouncing, and her eyes meet Holden’s and light with recognition. 

Holden takes a breath. He could walk by her, pretend not to see her, but that would just make her more persistent. The best he can do is to get this over with, quick as he can. 

He steps forward, and Morgan’s hand falls away, making Holden marvel once more about how the loss can be so cold even through the barrier of his clothes. 

“Is there something I can do for you, Miss Lounds?” Holden asks. 

The recognition veers to surprise, but Freddie Lounds covers it quickly as she extends a hand for Holden to shake. The leather of her gloves is remarkably cold. “Agent Ford. You know who I am?”

“I should hope so,” he replies as Morgan comes up alongside him. “TattleCrime and the FBI have a tangled past, don’t they?” Both an admonishment and a compliment. By the quirk at Freddie’s mouth, she’s picked up on it, but she’s appreciative of a diplomatic answer. “Can I help you with something?” he asks again, hoping she won’t acknowledge Morgan.

She, of course, does. “And you are?” 

All pleasantries, he shakes her hand, too. “Morgan Verger.” 

Freddie’s not quick enough to disguise her surprise at that one: her eyes widen, and if this were a cartoon, Holden is sure he’d be able to see her pupils transform into dollar signs. 

“Heir to the Verger throne mingling with the heir to the BSU. My, my,” she coos. Morgan grins. 

“You can just taste the story, can’t you?”

Holden can’t help the warning elbow he nudges into Morgan’s side, though the effort backfires, since it’s a far too familiar gesture that only causes the man to smile wider, and Freddie’s eyes to slant. “I don’t have a lot of time, Miss Lounds,” he tries, prompting her to get on with it. 

“Alright, elevator pitch it is,” she says. “Thanks to you, Agent Ford, TattleCrime is experiencing a renewed spike in readership. I was hoping you’d agree to an interview. You know,” she says, her voice oozing smarm, “so the information you want known is the information we’re printing.” The press doesn’t know about the church murder yet, so she’s referring to the Crawford ordeal, and a prickle of uncertainty dances down Holden’s spine as he wonders if she knows something she shouldn’t. 

But that’s ridiculous. The BSU is a tight circle and even tighter-lipped: what could she possibly have figured out? Though he wouldn’t put it past her to go sniffing through some ashes. 

Then she turns a knowing eye to Morgan. “Perhaps a double feature, even? Are you two close friends?” There’s a breath’s pause between _close_ and _friends_ that has Holden’s stomach somersaulting. 

“No comment,” Morgan answers for them, with the relaxed cadence of someone who’s been hounded by the press his whole life. Holden spares him a glance, and can’t spot a sliver in his demeanor that Freddie could worm her way into.

“Not even a little one? A morsel for the hungry masses?” This she aims at Holden, presumably identifying him to be the weaker of the two, and in the face of the press, she’s probably right. The flop of his stomach morphs into a churn. He racks his brain for what Bill might say, if he were here with him instead of Morgan. 

“The _“hungry masses”_ will be kept informed via official FBI sources, if and when there’s any information to give. Now, if you’ll excuse us.” Shifting the suit jacket to his elbow, Holden grabs Morgan’s forearm to start to steer them towards the parking lot, even though he has no idea what Morgan’s car looks like, or if he even drove. The guy probably has a chauffeur. 

But Freddie snatches his other hand before he can get too far. He opens his mouth to protest, but his words halt on his tongue as he feels her press a stiff slip of paper against his palm and curl his fingers down around it. “Well if you think of anything, or if you just want to talk, don’t hesitate to call. I think we could be of some use to each other. Maybe even be friends.”

Frustration flares in Holden’s veins. Why does everyone want to _talk_ to him all of a sudden? He’d been perfectly happy in his anonymity, and now he’s dodging people left and right who “ _just want to talk.”_ He’d never needed friends before, and had certainly never been the most popular kid in school, metaphorically and literally, and now everyone wants to “ _get to know him.”_ No one considers maybe he doesn’t _want_ to be known.

He accepts the business card with a grimace and all but drags Morgan to the parking lot. The man isn’t quite frowning at him, but there’s a speculative look in his eyes now, like Holden’s done something he hadn’t been expecting. Let a curtain waver in a breeze enough for him to get a glimpse behind it. 

When they’re out of Freddie’s earshot, Holden releases Morgan’s arm, but Morgan’s warm fingers snake up and encircle Holden’s wrist, like he’s feeling for Holden’s racing pulse. 

“You could answer now, if you wanted,” Morgan tells him, his voice soft, a matching caress to his fingers. “You don’t have to be afr—”

 _“Not here,”_ Holden hisses sharply, and curses himself, because that’s as much as an admission as _he_ is likely to give, and judging by how Morgan’s expression clears, he knows it too. Holden looks around furtively, spotting Freddie’s red hair still by the door, falling around her face as she scribbles on her notepad, but the rest of the parking lot is near deserted, and Holden’s car waits just a few paces away. “I have to go.”

Morgan’s fingers release him, and Holden lets his eyes flick up to Morgan’s once more, and in them, he sees nothing but promise. 

He tries not to run on his way to his car. 

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no they’re not related lol but. dopplegängers y’all. don’t get me started on dopplegängers. 
> 
> also!!!! Freddie!!!!!!!!! TattleCrime in this AU is a print tabloid rather than a blog for time period reasons, but I have been SO eager to bring her back. A little side piece (lol) came to me when I had some serious writer’s block for this fic, that became [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087814). 
> 
> I never thought in all my days I would like Freddie Lounds, but alas, here we are


	5. Chapter 5

The BSHCI is yet another behemoth of a brick building that makes Holden feel very small. And not the good kind of small usually inspired by cathedrals or libraries; instead, the kind of small that makes you feel like something God could very easily squish, and not even bother to scrape off his shoe.

Holden wasn’t raised to fear God— not in the traditional sense. God was never a threat to him or his family or their lifestyle; he was only something more powerful than them. More free, unconfined to the whims and norms of society. He was something to aspire to; not in godliness, per se, but in strength. Invulnerability. 

But what makes God invulnerable? Is it because he’s untouchable? Holden, at the moment, feels uncomfortably malleable. 

Waiting within the front doors is a pinched-looking secretary at the reception desk, who scowls at him as she pages an orderly, who manifests as an imposing brick building of a human. He scans Holden head to toe and likely comes to the conclusion he could eat Holden for breakfast, or maybe a light snack, because he doesn’t give him another glance as he escorts him to Alana Bloom. 

It’s a different feeling than being escorted into the depths of a standard prison. The BSHCI obviously has money: the walls are clean and white, not chipping, filthy pink, and the floors are shiny tile that clicks underfoot. The prisoners’ cells must be deeper in the building, because Holden spies a large visitors’ room and a small infirmary station on their walk down a long hallway, but both of them stand empty.

Alana, however, is found in a large office at the end of the hall, in almost the same pose as Holden found her in the Estate’s parlor: perched on a plush couch rather than behind the desk, and, again, skimming through a stack of papers, her reading glasses reflecting the warm glow of the lamplight. Her cane is propped beside her, its silver head glinting.

Holden slips on his mask as she looks up. 

“I am so sorry I’m late,” he gushes as the orderly closes the door behind him. “I tried to leave work on time, but then—” he cuts off, because he doesn’t know if Alana knows about Morgan’s appearance at the BSU, just as whether or not Morgan knows about Holden and Alana’s meeting— though that just makes him wonder why he’s even trying to, what, _ protect  _ Morgan?

Luckily, he doesn’t have to provide an excuse, as Alana gives his apology a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Relax, Holden, you’re fine. I’m the one who made you drive all the way out here.” She still provides no reason as to  _ why. _ Instead, she takes off her glasses and gestures for Holden to take a seat beside her. Beside her, not across— not like a formal session. A  _ conversation. _ “How are you?”

“Ah, good,” Holden answers as he settles. Her hair is down today, and it makes her look younger. “Yourself?”

“Rule number one of our conversations,” she says in reply, “‘Good’ is not an acceptable answer to any question. Though at least you didn’t say ‘fine.’ So, I’ll ask again: how are you?”

He tries for a smile, but intentionally misses it by a mile. It’s the same bashful act he’d given Crawford in the man’s living room, all those months ago. “Uh, I guess I’m… a little unsure? I don’t really know what to expect here.”

Probably in an effort to calm him, Alana settles back against the cushions, and turns to the office at large rather than pinning Holden beneath her gaze. Again, she doesn’t give him a further explanation, instead choosing another non-sequitur. “This was my old office, you know. The current director offered to let me keep it when I left for the board, but I let her have it, on the grounds I could still borrow it on occasion.” 

“Occasions such as these?” Holden asks.

This earns him a twist of her lips. “I can say these meetings will be the first of their kind.” She pauses. “At least for me.” 

She’s aware of the parallel they’re setting between their conversations and Hannibal and Will’s initial relationship, clearly, but not of how deep that parallel runs. “It’s like I said earlier. We’re here to discuss everything you can’t discuss with your coworkers. We’re here to discuss Will and Hannibal and Jack, and their lingering impact on you. How you’re… coping.”

“You still call them by their first names,” Holden observes absently, then winces when she looks surprised. “Sorry—”

“Am I not supposed to?” she asks, almost clinically, and Holden scrambles.

“I just— I didn’t think you’d want to be so… familiar with them. After what they did.”

She tilts her head and her hair falls in an inky waterfall over her shoulder. She doesn’t look at Holden but at the papers she’s still holding in her hands, and when she speaks, her voice sounds distant. “I believe we choose what haunts us,” she says. “And we decide what scares us, and we can learn how to take that power away. I’m on first-name basis with my ghosts.” She smiles, more than a little bitterly. “I think I’ve earned that.”

He can almost slip into the memory with her: a waterfall of hair, and a waterfall of glass and rain as a figure slowly descends to shatter on the earth below. Silently, he gives a nod of appreciation to the sister he never knew. She’d gifted Alana’s fall a degree of grace, even if it was unappreciated by its recipient.

“How are  _ you?”  _ he asks, to gently tug Alana back to the present. She follows, but with an arch of her eyebrow, so Holden offers a smile. “You said these were conversations, not therapy sessions. Conversations are two-way streets.”

She gives another short, amused laugh. “I suppose they are, aren’t they?” She pauses to consider. “I’m pleased you’ve accepted my invitation, but I’m eager to know what changed your mind.”

“We had a crime scene yesterday morning,” Holden starts. He has to pick his words carefully: only the base details, lay a verbal minefield to see if she’ll trip up and reveal she knows more than she might be about to let on. “After Wolf Trap, we knew someone would come to fill Lecter’s shoes eventually, but we didn’t think it would be so soon.”

“What was the scene?” 

“It was actually at the church you chose for Crawford’s funeral. The victims— there were two— were posed like the  _ Christus  _ statue. Do you know it?”

“I do; I’ve seen it. We went to Copenhagen on holiday for Margot’s fiftieth.”

Holden feigns nonchalance and brushes some imaginary dust from his knee. “Did the whole family go?” 

She smiles, and it’s genuine for the first time that evening. “We did. Morgan was just out of university and about to leave for South America for the first time, so we wanted to get in one last vacation before he was too busy.” So it was a significant location for Morgan, visited at the cusp of his…  _ adventures. _ If Alana knew Morgan was behind the scene, would she give this much information? Wouldn’t it have been smarter to say Morgan hadn’t gone? 

“Is he busy a lot, these days?"

Her smile broadens, and Holden’s heart squidges unexpectedly in his chest. “He’s out of the house quite a bit, yes, but he makes time for those he cares about.” So she doesn’t know what Morgan’s up to—  _ wait.  _

Holden isn’t quick enough to catch his blush from heating his cheeks. He casts his gaze down to his hands, fidgeting in his lap, to dodge her knowing look. What has Morgan told her? What is plain as day across Holden’s face? He’s usually so damn good at hiding— what is it about Morgan Verger that all these cracks are splintering in Holden’s mask, growing wider and wider against Holden’s wishes?

He startles when a soft touch falls on his knee. 

“It’s alright, Holden,” Alana tells him, more gently than he’d guessed her capable of. “You don’t have to be afraid of anything here.”

_ But doesn’t he?  _ This family is turning his whole world on its head, and he’s—

“I don’t—” he starts, but the words fail him.

“It’s alright,” Alana repeats. Then she takes pity on him. “Maybe we’ll save that for a later date, yeah?”

He gives a jerky nod, then nervously glances around for something to change the subject. Alana retracts her hand, and her fingers crinkle the papers still resting in her lap. He zeroes in. 

“Can I— can I ask what you were reading?” 

“Notes,” she says shortly, and seems about to leave it at that before she purses her lips, contemplative. “My notes on Hannibal, actually.” 

There’s the sharp, familiar keen of hunger in Holden’s gut at the words, that need to  _ know _ ever more about his fathers chasing away his unsteadiness, but he schools his thrill with an innocent blink. “I thought— didn’t the FBI subpoena everything? When he escaped?”

Alana nods. “They did. Though the subpoena requested all notes related to professional proceedings. These,” she taps a manicured finger to the packet, “are my personal notes.” A clever loophole. There’s another waffling moment of deliberation before she extends it for Holden to take. “Go on. I know you’ll just keep thinking about them.” 

“Nothing about curiosity killing the cat?” Holden asks, but he’s already all but snatching the papers from Alana’s hold. Why did she need to keep separate personal notes? What couldn’t she say in the official documents? 

“That cat’s been dead for a long time,” she says, but Holden barely hears her. 

Alana’s personal notes are as meticulous and thorough as Holden assumes her professional notes must look, her slanted script hurried and cramped on the lined pages, but still legible. There are no doodles in corners or ink blots, and hardly a single word is crossed out, like she knew exactly what she intended to write and had no time for errors. That’s a trait she inadvertently shares with Holden’s Tėtis, though Hannibal’s notes take on a more calligraphic style. Will’s notes, Holden knows from evenings snooping in his fathers’ studies, are just chicken scratch, decipherable only to their writer.

The words are a blur until Holden wills his thoughts to slow so they can process. Parsing through the notes is like trying to put together a single-color puzzle: he’s been given all the pieces and told they fit together, but he isn’t given any context from the sessions themselves. These are Alana’s thoughts post-sessions— all her words, and none of Hannibal’s. 

Though there are some of Will’s. 

_ Will visited today. He said it still feels like Hannibal can see through to the back of his skull. I can sense Hannibal growing tired of seeing through mine; I’ve already shown him everything in there, and now he’s bored of me. Even more so now his favorite plaything has returned.  _

Another day:  _ Will once told me he did his best to ignore the worst in Hannibal, but my problem is, I can see the worst, but I can also see the best, and I can’t ignore either.  _

Holden bites his tongue to suppress his snicker. These sound like the notes of a spurned ex. 

Another, near the end:  _ Jack is a fool, and this is a fool’s plan. If you give Hannibal an inch, he’ll take a thousand miles. And that’s where he’ll be at the end of this: a thousand miles away, and Will either a body in the morgue or a second ticket on an airplane.  _

They’d taken a boat, actually, once they’d swam ashore, but Holden doesn’t offer this information.

The last page is well-worn and slightly rumpled, like she’s held and reread it a hundred times, even though it only has one short entry, near the top:

_ Hannibal’s gone, with a promise to return.  _

_ He told me I died in his kitchen.  _

“Did you?” Holden asks. Then he cringes again.  _ Shit. _ He needs Alana on his side, he really can’t afford to be sticking his foot in his mouth. When he looks up, she’s studying him. “I mean—”

But Alana’s already leaning forward to see which page he’s on. “Did I what?” 

“He— you. You wrote he told you, uh, that you,” he clears his throat, “That you died, in his kitchen.”

Alana’s eyes are dark, but Holden doesn’t think that emotion— whatever it is— is directed at him. “I probably did. But sometimes deaths lead to rebirths. As we well know.” 

“Sometimes things crawl back up the cliffs they jumped off of,” Holden offers. Alana tilts her head.

“Precisely.” 

He needs to get them back on solid ground, but preferably not back on the subject of Morgan, or at least not Morgan-and-Holden. “Do you think Lecter kept separate notes?” 

Her brow lifts. “He burned his notes before his first escape.”

“He burned the official ones,” Holden corrects, and taps his finger against the paper. “Maybe he kept his own personal journal, too. After all, do we think he was writing about hiding Graham’s encephalitis where anyone could see, if they flipped to the right page?”

Alana hums. “We’ll never know. They burned, too, didn’t they?” 

Hannibal and Will, she means, in Wolf Trap’s ashes, but there’s that  _ doubt  _ again. Holden opens his mouth to ask, but before he can get a word out, she’s reaching forward and taking back the notes, setting them in a leather-bound folder that was waiting on the end table. She secures the clasp and grabs her cane. “Come,” she says, “there’s something I want to show you.”

She doesn’t summon the orderly, so he’s assuming they’re not headed towards any prisoner cells, but then she leads him from the office to a barred door across the way, so maybe they are. It requires both a key and a keypad entry code before it slides open, only to reveal another hallway that opens to a staircase behind another heavy metal door, which descends, presumably, into the pits of hell.

But at the bottom isn’t the devil, but yet another door, and beyond that is a room. The walls are stone and the air is thick with must, indicating that they’re now deep underground, and there’s a silence to this place that’s starting to creep under Holden’s skin. It’s like it’s gone one step beyond silence, into a quiet so loud it’s deafening. He can feel it like a pressure in his ears, but he doesn’t dare make a sound to pop it.

The room is dimly lit, and when Holden glances up at the cobwebbed ceiling, he doesn’t see any fluorescent lights, just dusty sconces. This place is old, and has been untouched for a long time. A mausoleum.

Or maybe an entry hall to a mausoleum. There’s another door ahead of them, but this one is open and waiting like a hungry mouth, and as Alana gestures for Holden to walk ahead of her, he subtly moves his hands to the front of his thighs so that it doesn’t feel like she’s one move away from yanking his hands behind his back and shackling them. He steps through the door, and is met with—

A glass wall. A glass wall extending from floor to ceiling, drilled through at waist level with a few small holes for air and sound flow, and dividing their viewing area from the prisoner cell on the other side. 

The _ empty _ cell. There’s a metal bed shoved up against a wall and a desk and chair positioned in the center of the room, but otherwise, the room is unoccupied, its built-in bookcases barren, its fireplace bricked. It’s a cell designed to taunt: here are modern luxuries and trimmings, but they’re useless, unable to fulfill their purpose or to provide distraction. It’s an echo of what once was, a reminder of what small things were lost along with the great thing of freedom. 

“This—” Holden tears his eyes away to find Alana over his shoulder. “This is Lecter’s old cell.”

She nods in confirmation. “It is. No one else has occupied it since he escaped. I keep it waiting.” Upon second survey, there’s no dust to be found, not like beyond the door. The room is practically gleaming, like no time had passed, like its inhabitant had merely stepped out for a stroll and will be returning any second. 

Its supposedly  _ dead _ inhabitant. Holden opens his mouth to point this out but she’s already turning back around, beckoning him to follow back the way they came. “Come on, tour isn’t over yet.” 

He follows as she brings him past the staircase to the opposite side of the room, where there’s another door he hadn’t noticed earlier. Alana pulls a key ring from her pocket and unlocks it, and ushers him inside once more.

And, again, he’s met with a glass wall. The difference this time is the room behind it.

Its interior design isn’t as decadent as Hannibal’s. There’s a cot pressed against the wall again, but the bookcases have been replaced by pale blue wallpaper, and instead of a fireplace there are wood frames where windows might be, only their panes are replaced with cement. There’s a desk again, in the center and bolted to the floor, but it’s wooden, not metal. It’s homier, as homey as a prison cell can be. And again, there’s not a dust bunny to be found.

Holden’s blood goes cold like it’s been spiked with ice water. 

“I had this one built the second they went over the cliff,” Alana explains. Her voice is unaffected, almost casual. Like she’s commenting on the weather. “Matching set of his and his.”

Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham didn’t wear their traumas on their sleeves. They had their untouched rooms of their mind palaces, of course, that bled into Holden’s own— a long-devoured aunt; a dead sister with long black hair— but as the years moved on, so did the memories, the night sweats. 

But some afterimages lingered, small bloodstains on the sleeve cuffs of the mind that the water couldn’t quite wash out. 

When Holden was really little, he sometimes thought his Tėtis was a god— not in that he created the universe, but in that he, like God, was untouchable, too. Not unlovable, but never able to fully be held or understood. Invulnerable. It wasn’t until Holden grew older that he started noticing the smaller tics: Tėtis waiting in the larger halls when the libraries and churches they toured grew narrow and tight; Tėtis opening windows even in rainy weather just to feel the air circulate. Yes, the rooms of their homes had hiding spaces, naturally, but you could almost always see through from one end of the floorplan to the other, and they always,  _ always _ had a view. There were no unnecessary walls. The doors only ever locked from the inside.

Standing here, Holden feels a pang of pure, unbridled loathing that thrums through his very bones, directed at the woman who made his Tėtis feel trapped, at the idea of anyone  _ daring _ to take away his fathers’ freedom. Both of his parents had been imprisoned within these towering walls, and if Alana had her way, they would be again until the day they died. If Holden is ever caught, he wonders if he’d be given a place here, too, for tradition’s sake. There’s a scrap of comfort, at least, that these walls hadn’t been strong enough to hold his fathers. He resolves they’ll never hold him, either. 

Even if Holden has to tear it down brick by brick, this place shouldn’t be allowed to stand. He had burned down Wolf Trap— and at this moment, he wants nothing more than to burn down this hell, too. 

Some monsters do not belong in cages. 

“But they’re dead,” Holden says.  _ Protests? Defends? _ “Everyone thought they were dead then, and they’re— they’re dead now. I saw them.” He blinks at her, owlish. 

She’s unfazed. “I’ll believe it when I see it with my own two eyes.”

“You don’t believe me?” he can’t help but bite out, his voice strained. “Why would I lie?”

“It’s not a question of believing you or not, or your integrity,” she counters. “It’s my own form of self-protection. The devil is only a threat to us because we don’t have any way to stop him. We don’t have any place to keep him if we caught him.” She waves her hand to the cell—  _ Will’s  _ cell. “Now we do.”

As much as he would love to wrap his hands around her throat and kill her now, he can’t yet. He’s here for one reason— not to gain a friend or a confidante or an enemy, but to play pretend once more with his fathers’ ghosts. He needs to know what Alana knows, needs to stay one step ahead. He needs to know how to keep himself, and his fathers, safe. 

This is a woman who claims to be fighting off her demons, but doesn’t realize they’ve already left her behind, and she’s the one who can’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when I tell you foreshadowing is all I live for… y’all.


	6. Chapter 6

“Were you raised religious?” Bill asks Holden as they stand at the next crime scene. 

Holden attempts to move a step to the right so he’s not standing directly on a grave, but his foot snags on the nameplate. Bill steadies him. Holden takes the opportunity to subtly use him as a human shield against the cool morning fog that’s clinging to the cemetery like old gum. “I’m Catholic on paper,” he lies. “But not a very good one off-paper.”

“I was raised Methodist,” Bill grumbles. 

Wendy appears beside them from the mist. “And I’m an atheist, but even I could recognize this scene a mile off.”

Crawford’s gravesite is still fresh, a mound of brown dirt dampened by the early dew, adorned with a single pathetic-looking bouquet of white lilies donated by the Bureau. Bella’s grave rests a few feet away, respectfully excluded from the graphic scene spread on top of Jack’s. She has no role to play in this.

The bouquet is serving as a pillow for a corpse. It’s another young male, this time with long blonde curls that spread out around his head in a damp halo. There are strangulation bruises around his neck, done with something thicker than human hands, and his blue eyes are pinned open and unseeing at the sky again, obliterating any doubt that this vic belongs to their killer.

The body is naked this time, though. Its torso has been cut open and the ribcage splayed, and the exposed chest cavity has been cleaned; the bones are shining white with no mess of blood, though Holden knows they’ll still find all the organs, just shoved aside. Morgan’s a psychopath, but he doesn’t strike Holden as a cannibal, too. That particular hunger probably doesn’t even occur to him.

There’s a rib that has been broken in a clean snap from the cage, and it rests in one of the open hands. One of _ four  _ open hands, two naturally extending from the corpse’s arms, and two attached unnaturally to the sides of his wrists, like a bouquet of fingers. 

“I’ll bet you ten bucks the extra pair belongs to the missing Gardener body,” Bill says. He clicks his tongue. “Poor hippie. Though I guess it discounts our theory on twins.” 

“Our unsub’s theme is probably duplicity, rather than twins,” Wendy replies. “A working pair. In this case, Adam and Eve.”

Adam’s rib, pried by a bodiless pair of hands from Adam’s chest, for God to form Eve from. Holden might like this display even more than the masked twins; however, he’s a little insulted Morgan doesn’t consider him already fully formed. Though he’d rather be cast as Eve than Adam any day. She’s the one who chose truth rather than a life of passivity. No matter the cost.

Except Morgan’s cast himself as God, the cocky bastard. 

“Holden?” someone says, startling him back to the present. Bill’s looking at him expectantly, meaning he’s been asked a question that he’s missed. Shit.

“Sorry?” 

Bill rolls his eyes. “It’s share with the class time,” Bill tells him. “Any ideas?”

“Oh, uh. It’s Adam and Eve.”

Wendy snorts. “Gee, really?”

Holden flushes. “Ah, well. He’s— he’s definitely expanding on his message from the first vic,” he offers. Wendy hums and gestures for him to continue. “The first was an invitation. This one is the offer. What’ll happen if we accept.”

“He wants to make us a woman?” Bill raises a skeptical brow.

“He wants to make us a  _ partner, _ ” Wendy clarifies. 

_ Me, _ a greedy little voice hisses inside Holden.  _ He wants to make  _ me _ his partner. _

“So is it a fanboy, or a suitor?” Wendy muses, sending Holden’s heart stuttering. 

Bill’s face scrunches. “What do you mean?”

“It’s like you said at Wolf Trap. Now that Lecter’s dead, someone’s going to want to take the place of the next big bad. I think our unsub is courting us.” She looks up at the graves and the techs in their white scrubs bustling through them like sheeted spirits. “But how would we accept, even if we wanted to? Is he watching us?”

Just as the words leave her mouth, Holden catches sight of a flash of red, hovering at the edge of the cordoned off crime scene, and he can’t hold back his sigh. “No, but someone is,” he mutters. He leaves Wendy and Bill without explanation and traipses through the headstones towards their voyeur. 

She has her camera in hand, aimed right at him, which she lowers to reveal her grin as he nears.

Maybe it’s the stress getting to him, maybe it’s exasperation, but he nixes the stammering act this time around. “Are you following me, Miss Lounds?” 

Her curls are unnaturally— almost disrespectfully— bright in contrast to the sober, dreary landscape. “In my early days I was referred to as an ‘ambulance chaser,’” she says cheerily. “It’s a bit crude, but I’ve never denied it, Agent Ford.”

“No ambulance here, though. Just a coroner.”

“The scent of the dead carries on the slightest of winds.” At his look of disbelief, her smile broadens. “Plus I might still have a few eyes in the Bureau walls.”

Predictable. Holden tsks. Another con of a basement office: everyone sees you leave. “Nobody talks quite like a few Benjamins.”

“Your words, not mine.” She tries to look innocent, but doesn’t pull it off. “Though I think you’ll find I’m not breaking any laws being here. We’re on public property, meaning this is public information.” 

She’s not wrong, and they’ll be debriefing with Shepard back at the office to draft his press conference speech later this afternoon, but Holden still feels that possessive spike again, only this time he’s not sure what— or who— it’s directed towards. “I’ll ask kindly that you don’t make this public information yet, Miss Lounds. We have a killer who likes to be noticed, and we all know what happened the last time you gave into a killer’s vanity.”

This wipes the smile off her face. “That wasn’t my idea.”

“It was in the past.” 

“I can’t be held responsible for the retaliatory actions of my readers.” Spoken like someone who’s well-versed in libel legalese.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much.”

“You’re certainly chattier than you were last time we met,” she strikes back. “Abusive boyfriend got your tongue?”

“Excuse me,” a voice interrupts loudly, making them both jump. It’s Bill, who is looking between them incredulously. “Holden? What’s happening here?” 

Freddie immediately starts pulling the demure act with their newcomer, batting her eyes to try to win Bill over to her side, not knowing he’s even more of an immovable force than Holden. “You must be Agent Bill Tench, the strong and not-so-silent partner,” she says, all honeyed. 

Bill just blinks at her, before looking back at Holden. Freddie scowls. “Holden?” 

“Chasing off the flies,” Holden replies. 

Bill nods; it’s all the explanation he needs. “Ma’am, this is an active crime scene, and we have to treat all personnel within a certain radius as suspicious. Unless you back up another hundred yards, you’ll be rounded up for questioning, and required to adhere to an NDA until our case goes through trial.” There’s no trial in development, because they don’t have any suspects, but Freddie doesn’t know that. 

Nothing makes a reporter scram faster than the threat of an NDA. Freddie shoots Holden one last narrowed glare before she goes. “Remember, my offer of friendship still stands, but every offer has an expiration date.”

Holden smiles beatifically. “Noted.” He doesn’t really intend to make an enemy of Freddie, but right now, he’d very much like her to get the heck away from his gift. Crime scene. Whatever. 

Bill and Holden watch her march off, before Bill turns to him and Holden braces for the inevitable scolding. 

“Since when do you talk to the press?” Bill admonishes. 

“That was Freddie Lounds,” Holden tells him, and Bill’s disapproval is immediately replaced with disbelief. “I’ve had enough of Crawford’s shadows.” 

As they head back towards the grave, Holden realizes that’s exactly what Morgan would have wanted him to say. 

There’s not much else to glean from the site, so they leave the techs to their tasks and make their way back to the office, where they’ll refine their theories before bringing them up to Shepard for the press briefing. Holden’s just stepped through the door and is mid-shucking off his jacket when Wendy speaks.

“What’s that?” 

They all turn to look where she’s pointing. There, waiting on Holden’s desk, is a box.

It’s a small package, a little bigger than a cassette, wrapped in silver paper and silver ribbon. Holden picks it up to inspect it, not overly concerned about any possibility of danger, because for one, he’s sure no one could access these offices without first being cleared by the front desk, and for two, he’s almost certain he knows who it’s from. There’s no note, but there’s been a pattern of gifts lately.

“Did we miss a birthday?” Bill asks, even though he’s perfectly aware when Holden’s birthday is. 

A big part of Holden is frustrated that Morgan would so carelessly establish a connection between himself and the as-yet-unidentified killer, and rope Holden so obviously into it, too. But another piece of Holden is preening under the attention. 

_ It’s courting, _ Wendy had said, and Holden flushes. He’s never been  _ wooed _ before.

“There’s no note,” he says out loud. 

Wendy drapes her own coat over her arm, not yet going to her office. Absently, Holden wonders if she’s still in regular contact with Alana Bloom. “Well go on, open it.” 

He undoes the ribbon and fumbles with trying to tear the paper neatly before finally deciding  _ fuck it _ and ripping it. Beneath the paper is a slim black box, which he opens to reveal… a tie. 

A very  _ expensive _ tie, judging by the butter-soft fabric beneath his fingers. It’s steel blue, near silver, with dark red herringbone stitching, like blood veins under pale skin. Holden thinks it’d pair well with his grey suit, and knows Morgan thought the same. 

“Who the fuck is giving you neckwear?” Bill asks gruffly, making Holden startle. 

Wendy, however, has a knowing glint in her eyes. “It’s very handsome.” Holden hides his smile with a duck of his head, scrambling to tuck the tie back in its box before shoving it unceremoniously into his briefcase. 

Bill grumbles something about discussing their approved-visitor list with the front desk and stomps off to his office, and Wendy twists on her heel with a little smile, leaving Holden to quietly slide the wrapping paper into his case, too. The ribbon he wraps tightly around his knuckles, until the pressure makes the flesh of his fingers swell purple. 

After the press conference, which was standard procedure as usual— another run-of-the-mill killer doesn’t get quite the same fanfare as the earlier resurrection of the Murder Husbands— it’s Holden’s turn to go fetch a late lunch, and really, he shouldn’t be surprised when he gets back to the Quantico parking lot and finds Morgan leaning against a car beside Holden’s usual spot. 

Holden’s not wearing the tie, but he’s still got the ribbon tucked deep in his pocket, and the fabric feels like it’s burning a hole through his trousers as he climbs out with his carryout bag. 

Morgan’s dressed like he’s just come from work, shirt and cardigan layered under a blazer, the collar of his button-down undone to reveal a sliver of tanned skin. He doesn’t move from his spot, instead letting Holden choose how near or far they stand. Holden sets the bag on the roof of his car and opts for near, leaning against his own car door, so that the toes of their shoes very nearly touch. 

“Did you like my gift?” Morgan asks, and it’s not clear if he’s referring to the morning’s corpse or the tie, so Holden doesn’t specify either.

“I did, thank you,” he answers truthfully. There’s no one around to hear them now, no Bill or Wendy or Freddie in sight, the press gone to prep the evening news and the parking lot quiet with most everyone back inside from lunch break. 

To describe Morgan’s smile as sunny would be the understatement of the century. Holden’s tempted to look up to see if it’s chased off the clouds themselves; it’s not the man’s feline grin, but it’s something different that makes Holden stand straighter. “Good. Come for a drink with me tonight.”

Rendered speechless, Holden gapes at him. Morgan continues like he’d asked for specifics. 

“There’s a bar near D.C. I know of. Bit of a dive, younger crowd, so you wouldn’t have to worry about running into anyone you know.” He still doesn’t step closer, but Holden can feel his presence encroaching like it’s plastering along his front, impossible to escape. “You could unwind. You could have a whole night where you don’t have to play pretend.” 

“You want… with me?” Holden stammers. 

“I’ve made my intentions pretty clear, I think.” Morgan’s voice is low. Coaxing. It feels like he’s whispering directly into Holden’s ear. “I want to see you.” 

That twist in his gut flares to life with a stinging burst of heat, and Holden knows that’s what it was meant to have been this whole time. It’s not fear, or apprehension, or anger. It’s  _ excitement. _

No one has ever seen Holden without his mask before. No one besides his parents, that is; the ones who taught him how to wear the mask in the first place, and to never take it off for anyone— the one exception to that rule so far had died a handful of minutes later, gone up in smoke. Beyond that, no one had ever realized Holden  _ wore _ a mask in the first place. But someone has seen through. Someone has seen through to  _ him,  _ because the veil had been lifted from their eyes, too, only they loved the feel of the fresh air on their exposed nerves so much that they want to give that relief to Holden, too.

_ Why? _ murmurs the little voice, but Holden shushes it. It doesn’t really matter why, right? Holden had left Wolf Trap ready to take the next step towards his freedom, and here it is being offered on a silver platter. 

“Should I wear the tie?” Holden rasps, and Morgan hums.

“As much as I’d love to see you in it, I think we’ll save that for another time. Dress down tonight.” Morgan’s hand disappears into his pocket for a moment and emerges with a pen, which he uncaps with one hand while he reaches the other across the small canyon between them to take Holden’s. Holden wonders what it would be like to curl his cold fingers around those warm ones, feel out their callouses, their scars, the evidence of a life lived in the sun.

The pen is a dull scrape as Morgan writes the address on Holden’s wrist, just where the hem of his sleeve would fall to cover it. “Ten o’clock,” he says. “Take a cab, pay with cash.”

His thumb presses a hot brand to Holden’s pulse point, and then he’s gone, climbing back into his car and pulling away, leaving Holden to school his features back into his old familiar innocence before he can head into the office. 

This time, the face fits a little funny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is almost completely written, but there are still some holes to patch and edits to mend so posting will slow down just a little bit after this! I’m aiming for every other day on weekdays, but still every day on weekends, but it’ll mostly be one chapter at a time rather than two~
> 
> thank you so much for all the love so far!!! your comments and kudos make my heart sing <3<3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my bastard sons ffs

He stays later at the office that evening so Bill and Wendy won’t start to suspect anything, and he thinks he’s in the clear when Wendy and Bill retreat to their separate nooks. But it still must be unusually early when he switches off his desk light and starts pulling on his jacket, because Bill pokes his head out his office door before he can make a break for it.

Bill’s looking at him like Holden’s suddenly broken out in purple hives or sprouted bunny ears. “Again, I’d ask if you had a hot date—” he starts, and Holden moves quick under the scrutiny to straighten his jacket sleeves and hide the pen mark from view, but he can pinpoint the exact moment he knows it’s too late, because the words die on Bill’s tongue. Bill’s seen it. And he knows what it means, because Holden doesn’t write on his hands, and Holden’s face betrays him further with a furious blush.

“Oh,” Bill says, quiet, which Holden spares a second to silently thank him for in the midst of his chagrin, because he couldn't handle Wendy being drawn from her office to ogle at him, either.

“I’m just— heading out,” Holden says, equally hushed. 

“Right,” Bill says, after a long moment. He clears his throat against his awkwardness, and he turns to go back to his desk, Holden ready to hightail it out of there, when Bill speaks again. “Holden.” Holden freezes. Bill opens his mouth, then second guesses whatever he was going to say and closes it, then opens it again, before finally settling on, “Be careful.”

It’s all Holden can do to nod, before he flees. 

The dive bar’s off a stretch of hipster restaurants and clubs at the outskirts of D.C., and looks to be popular with college-aged kids and young professionals who’ve sniffed out all the best spots to get drunk or get high away from the city’s senators and presshounds, who probably also happen to be their parents. It’s a busy place, occupants spilling out on the streets with their cigarettes and beer bottles, and the night’s well under way. The weather has improved to a cool early summer evening, and it’s the weekend, which Holden hadn’t even registered until he’d had trouble hailing a cab willing to take him an hour north until he’d flashed his billfold. 

Morgan’s at the edge of the outdoor stragglers, smoking a cigarette by the curb when Holden’s cab pulls up. He starts laughing the second Holden pays the absurd fare and tip and steps out.

“What?” Holden asks. He was already self-conscious, but now he’s painfully so. He tugs at the sleeves of his shirt. He’d given himself only a scrap of time to change at his apartment before getting a cab, so he couldn’t agonize over his appearance in the mirror for too long; he’d left the tie behind, as instructed, and replaced his blazer with a navy sweater, and even traded his suit pants for the only pair of jeans he owns. He thought he looked like a regular guy getting off work. He doesn’t look too different from Morgan, even, he thinks, who’s in essentially the same outfit, only his probably cost a lot more, and he’s wearing a worn leather jacket instead of a sweater. _Leather is easier to clean,_ Holden’s pesky little voice comments. 

“Nothing, nothing,” Morgan says as he squashes his cigarette under his shoe, though he’s still grinning. “You look great, it’s just— well, honestly, you look like an undercover cop. How do you still look like a cop, even out of uniform?” _How deep does the mask go,_ is what he’s really asking, which just leaves Holden even more disgruntled and fighting off the wave of embarrassment threatening to overtake him, because he hit the nail on the head. Holden hadn’t known how to dress. Who is Holden Ford when he’s not in uniform?

“Not a cop,” Holden grumbles, and Morgan finally takes pity on him. 

“You’re right,” he says, drawing nearer on the sidewalk, and Holden catches whiff of the lingering cigarette smoke as it’s carried off in the evening breeze. “Can I still—?” he trails off, raising his hands in offering, and Holden nods his consent, even lifts his arms slightly away from his sides, like a child ready to be fussed over, or— he swallows— like _Christus._

Morgan takes the liberty to push Holden’s sleeves up to his forearms, letting Holden track his pleased smile as he notes the untouched pen mark, before he moves to tug at Holden’s sweater so it’s artfully rumpled. Then Morgan reaches up and slides his fingers through Holden’s hair, a long, slow motion at first, nails dragging lightly along Holden’s scalp and making his skin break out in goosebumps, before he tousles the curls and pulls away. “There,” he says, stepping back to admire his work. “That’s better.”

This close, Holden’s reminded of Wendy’s words from a few days ago: like this, disheveled and stripped down, their resemblance is almost uncanny— they really could be brothers. Morgan had demonstrated his agreement with the idea with the Gardener twins. Holden muses what tableaus Morgan would have created had Holden taken longer to agree to tonight: Cain and Abel, maybe? But that really would have been a threat. Holden has the skittering thought that it’s good he agreed when he did. 

“Come on, I promised you a drink,” Morgan says, but doesn’t touch Holden again as they make their way into the bar. 

It makes sense why he doesn’t, Holden reasons, as Morgan leads him through the crowded smoke-cloudy room, where they find an empty booth in a far corner before Morgan leaves for the bar. They don’t know anyone in town, or at least this part of town, and although younger folks are likely to be more accepting of two men _together,_ that doesn’t mean they can’t draw unwanted attention, and they can’t do whatever it is they’re going to do tonight under observation. Luckily, Holden knows how to be invisible.

He also knows his own defenses aren’t going to come down easily, no matter how interested he is in pulling apart the seams in broad daylight. Metaphorical daylight, that is. The flickering neon and dim bar lights will have to do at present. 

Morgan reappears with two bottles; Holden’s more grateful for something to do with his hands than the alcohol. His aim tonight isn’t to get buzzed. He takes a sip of his beer and the liquid serves as a balm down his dry throat.

“So,” he says, to break the silence between them, even as uncertainty trickles its way down his spine. The scene plays like an echo of his conversation with Alana. “How does this work?”

Morgan shares his mother’s love of non-sequiturs. “Is Holden your real name?”

“What?”

Morgan enunciates each word slowly. “Is Holden your real name?”

“Yes,” Holden stammers, bewildered. “Yes, it is. Why—”

“Is Ford?”

His jaw snaps shut, and Morgan’s eyes darken. His reaction is enough of a giveaway. “I don’t see how that—” Holden casts a quick glance around them, to see if anyone’s watching them, eavesdropping, but then Morgan hums a low note, snagging Holden’s attention back to him.

“Don’t look at them, look at me. They’re not listening. They’re nothing,” he says. When Holden still doesn’t make an effort to answer, Morgan sighs, and Holden feels the solid press of a shoe against his own beneath the table. It sends a jolt of sparks up his leg. “Alright, look, _this_ is how it works. You don’t have to tell me all the sordid details of your past. But,” Morgan proposes, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” 

It’s— it’s _wildly_ dangerous, but Holden _has_ to bite. What had he been expecting, a night out on the town without having to reveal any truths about himself? Morgan had been generous so far, but that generosity couldn’t extend forever.

Holden has to pry his claws from the closely-guarded secrets of his identity to satiate this creature seated before him. Even setting aside the personal reasons of what’s at stake, this— some rational part of him crows— is too tied to his research: his real research, the study that drew him to the FBI in the first place. He’s sharing a booth with a man born from depravity but raised separate from it, yet who still found his way back. It’s the BSU’s unending debate of nature vs nurture, its answer ticking seductively at the end of a long, shadowed hallway— is this all innate, buried deep inside of us, inherited, waiting, waiting. 

But Holden can’t give it all. He has people to protect. He has to have a strategy.

“A fair trade, then,” he counters. “A question for a question.” 

Morgan smiles, benevolent. “I’ll agree to those terms.” He relaxes back in the booth, the vinyl squeaking beneath his jacket, but he doesn’t move his shoe away from Holden’s. “I’ve asked two already, so it’s your turn.”

Holden doesn’t hesitate. “Do your mothers know about you?”

Morgan barks a laugh. “I guess we didn’t say anything about _stupid_ questions,” he admonishes. “No, they don’t.” But then he pauses, registers what Holden really asked. _Mothers._ “Wait— how do you—?”

“Nuh-uh, it’s still my question,” Holden dodges. “How long have you been doing this?”

Morgan’s gaze is sharper, now, but he abides by their agreement and doesn’t protest further. The pulsing music and chatter casts a muffling blanket over their corner that Holden is immensely grateful for. “My first was in college,” Morgan says. 

It’s a puzzle piece clicking into place, and Holden’s eyes widen. “Your professor,” he says, not a question, but a statement. “The one who got mugged.”

It earns him an appreciative nod. “I’ll admit I was… over-excited, which made me sloppy, but I cleaned up after myself well enough. No one suspected a thing. The detectives on the case even shook my hand and thanked me for my help at the end.” There’s sharkish pride in Morgan’s smile. “My turn. Did you kill Jack Crawford?”

This one Holden can answer truthfully. “No.” Morgan’s brow furrows in a mix of confusion and disappointment, and Holden feels an irrational stab of shame that he quickly shoves aside, focusing instead on steering Morgan away from the night in Wolf Trap. “How many have you…?”

He doesn’t need to elaborate; Morgan’s eyes brighten with smug satisfaction. “To be honest, I’ve lost count. More than a dozen, maybe dozen and a half. Like I said, it’s terribly easy for people to go missing in the jungle. Not so easy here, though.” 

“You’ve done pretty well with the last few,” Holden points out, and Morgan preens. 

“Well, I knew someone inside who would help turn heads that started looking too close,” he explains, meaningfully, and Holden averts his eyes as his cheeks heat.

“That’s a lot of faith to place in someone you’ve just met.” He picks at the label of his bottle. A disturbed bead of condensation drips to the table, and Holden presses his index finger to the droplet to watch it expand; against the dark wood, it wells like blood.

The amusement is audible in Morgan’s voice. “I trust my instincts.”

Holden has his next question on the tip of his tongue, but it isn’t his turn. Morgan picks up on his impatience so he drags on his musing, making Holden wait as he takes another lingering pull from his beer. 

“Am I the first who’s ever seen you?” he finally asks. _Beyond the mask._

Holden nods. “How did you know? About me, I mean.”

“How do you know when your suspect is guilty?” Morgan counters, but it’s not posed as a question, but an explanation. “You sense it, right? There’s something in the way he looks at you, or doesn’t look at you, and you can’t pinpoint it until it’s right in front of you, and then it’s all you can see. That’s what happened. I saw you up there in that church, giving your speech, and there was this moment… it was like you looked right through all of us. Like you knew everything there was to know about us, and it wasn’t worth your time. You were beyond us. And I knew that look, because I see it whenever I look in a mirror.”

Holden steals the quote from a long-past version of his dad. “Like looking through to the back of your skull,” he murmurs. Morgan tilts his bottle in agreement.

“Exactly. But my question is, _why hide?”_ he asks. “Why not give into who you really are? Even sitting here in front of me, I can see what you’re doing. You angle yourself, like… like a magician’s mirror, trying to get me to see only what you want me to see. And you’re very good at it. Who taught you?”

“Who taught _you?"_ Holden fires back. He doesn’t give an answer of his own, but Morgan doesn’t seem to mind brushing aside their pretense. 

“You mean, how did I become my father without knowing him?” Morgan quirks an eyebrow. “I never met the man, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t raised by him. His shadow was _everywhere;_ I couldn’t escape it. I went off to boarding school and my classmates would ask me about him, or his twisted little fan club would stalk me— stand on the other side of the fence and try to get me to come over and talk to them during gym. I was protected, sure: I come from a happy, wealthy family, with money for security. I was never abused. As an adult, I have a stable job, I’m respected. And yet here I am. I’m guessing your story’s similar?”

Holden only offers a shrug. Morgan continues with a huff. “Well, then I went to South America for the first time, and— it was just so _easy_ , you know? None of the— the planning or the alibis or that nonsense that I needed in university. And I had the means. When you’re head of your own company you know the best hiding spots. Corners no one thinks to look— _and no one’s looking._ Your FBI guys think they’ve got it pegged: your usual psychopath is an insecure loner from, what, a broken family, lower middle class, sexually deviant? And yet you and I don’t fit those boxes.” He smirks and inches closer over the tabletop, his eyes burning embers. “Well, except maybe that last part.” 

If earlier Holden was a fly in a web, now he’s a moth before a flame, enticed forward with each warm honeyed word. His collar is suddenly tight, almost as if he really were wearing the tie, but he clears his throat and pushes on. “You get off on being different from the rest,” he summarizes. Morgan rolls his eyes and leans back again, but the air doesn’t return to Holden’s lungs. 

“What, and you don’t? Don’t get a thrill every time you walk through a crowd and realize that no one has any idea what you are? What you’re capable of?” He gestures to the bar at large, the people drinking, laughing, playing darts, flirting. Completely oblivious to the occupants of the corner booth. 

It used to scare Holden, to be honest. There was a time he’d thought his invisibility a premature grave, rather than a gift: every new town, every rejected friendship, every academic year spent holed up inside, watching from the window as the village kids took the path to school. It was lonely. Even before he’d been born, Holden had been doomed to a life of obscurity. A breathing ghost. It wasn’t until later he realized how much power that gave him.

He’s a ghost in this bar right now. No one will remember him being here, no one’s even looking their way. Some of the nervous tension in his gut unravels, and he straightens his shoulders imperceptibly, except maybe to Morgan, who gifts him his feline smile that sends Holden’s heart fritzing. When Holden speaks again, his voice is stronger. Steadier. The voice he uses when he talks to his fathers, the voice with which he gave Jack Crawford his true name. 

“So it’s ego?” he challenges. “You crave power? That doesn’t make you much different from our usual deviants.” Morgan laughs again, delighted.

“You’re right, that doesn’t mean anything. Everyone craves power. Sure, some crave submission,” and here he drags the toe of his shoe slowly up Holden’s calf, but instead of blushing, Holden lets his eyes darken, reflecting Morgan right back to him, “but they want to be in control of their submission. Consent to _give,_ rather than have it taken.” 

“Why invite me here?” Holden asks, because he wants to hear Morgan say it. “Why the displays? The twins. Adam and Eve.”

“Because we’ve been chosen,” Morgan says simply. Holden blinks, surprised, because that wasn’t what he’d been expecting, but Morgan beats him to his question. “No, I’m not some religious nut. But how else can you explain it? We’ve been given this gift of sight that no one else has. We’ve been chosen to see the world for what it is, but we haven’t been told what to _do_ with that power. It _could_ be a curse, hell, maybe a punishment— or, maybe, just maybe, it’s a _blessing._ We’ve been charged to use our powers and cleanse this world of all who make it imperfect. And the moment I saw you,” he murmurs, his voice silk, sliding under Holdens’ skin to wrap around his very bones, “I knew I wasn’t supposed to do it alone.”

With a slow inhale, Morgan sets his bottle aside and clasps his hands in front of him like he’s about to make a business proposition. “We could do terrible things together, Holden Ford,” he promises. “I think you have it in you to be extraordinary, and I want to see it. I want to _help you_ see it.”

He thinks of Resurrection, or Judgment— the young man frozen between Heaven and Hell. And Morgan on the other side of the veil, holding out a hand. 

And would it really be so bad, to have someone know you? To have companionship, to share the burden? His fathers have it— in a purer form, but _it_ nonetheless. Holden’s been playing at being invisible for so long that he doesn’t know what to do with someone else’s eyes on him. Doesn’t know whether to give in, or to rip his skin off and run.

But Holden’s been running his whole life. 

He traps Morgan’s foot between his own, and downs the rest of his drink. “You want to get some air?” he asks, even though it’s not his turn. 

Next thing he knows, they’re slipping down a back hallway, past the restrooms, past the greasy kitchen, and stumbling out the back door to an alleyway. It’s wrapped in a thick darkness, sparsely lit from the haze of the street lamps down the block, puddles from the morning’s drizzle reflecting like gold underfoot and edges of dumpsters being thrown into jagged, monstrous shapes, and Holden barely has a moment to check that it’s empty, the graffiti-covered door not even fully swinging shut behind them, before Morgan’s shoving him backwards and pinning him up against the brick wall of the building, and Holden doesn’t even have time to blink before Morgan’s face is a hair’s breadth away from his. 

But now that he’s shedding his skin, Holden refuses to let Morgan have all the upper hand. His hands white-knuckle in the fabric of Morgan’s jacket, and he drags the other man into a monster’s kiss. 

Because that’s what it is: it’s violent, pulling and pushing, more a fight than a kiss, but their mouths meet hot and wet and Morgan’s stubble is a rasp along his chin, and their teeth click and he can taste the smoke and beer and it’s all Holden can do not to _snarl._ Behind him the bricks bite at his back through his sweater, and Morgan shoves a thigh between his legs, bringing the heat between them from scalding to incinerating.

And then, just as Morgan drags his mouth away to latch onto Holden’s neck, bringing up those hazy thoughts of vampires once more, he hears it—

_“Fuckin' homos.”_

They break apart, though it’s like ripping superglue from skin. Holden wonders if they would have both happily devoured each other, in this back alley of a bar, if something hadn’t come along to interrupt them.

_“Disgustin', rotten sodomites.”_

Something that is continuing to hurl slurs at them. They both turn to the noise. 

There’s a man, a few paces away, crouched beside a dumpster, almost indistinguishable from the trash bags. He’s clearly a bum: his hair is long and matted, his skin so dirty it looks like he’s been dunked in motor grease, his clothes tattered and soiled. He’s glaring their way with half-lidded, glazed eyes, clearly high on something, and the profanities fall from his lips like spittle. 

Some distant, muted part of Holden that isn’t caught up in the solid press of Morgan against him registers a spike of panic. They have a witness. Someone has seen them— two men, the Verger heir and an FBI agent, flimsy and far away as those skins feel right now— in a compromising position. It doesn’t matter that no one would believe a junkie, or if the junkie even knows who they are. It’s like tunnel vision: the one thought echoing through Holden’s veins, the caverns of his bones. Someone has seen. Someone knows. 

Morgan has the same thought, but his manifests as frustration, rather than panic. He hisses a curse, and his hands tighten where they’re gripping Holden’s waist, broad fingers edging along Holden’s ribcage beneath the rucked up sweater. Holden hadn’t even noticed the touch of the cool evening air on his exposed skin until now. 

They’re both breathing hard. Holden has half a mind to drag Morgan down the other side of the alley and into a cab, to continue this conversation at his place and pretend away their witness with the childlike logic of _out of sight, out of mind_ , but Morgan reads his thoughts and presses a quick kiss to his temple, his curls rustling as he shakes his head.

“They’re not meant to see yet,” Morgan says, his murmur warped with fury. “They’re not meant to see us yet.”

He means the world. What is one strung-out bum, in the grand scheme of whatever this is. This game. This courtship. 

Holden exhales. “You want to kill him.” 

A frost-slow smile. “No one would catch us. They can’t hear. They don’t care about anything beyond the ends of their own noses.” And he’s right: Holden can still hear the thrum of music coming from the bar, and the mouths of the alley are too far away for any passersby to see what’s going on at its heart, if they even bother to turn their heads. “And listen to him. He’s _scum._ What does he have to offer the world, compared to us?”

Holden is… conflicted. He tugs at the edges of his mask again, so Morgan can’t see his inner debate. 

If there is anything his fathers have taught him, it’s caution. Deliberation, planning so meticulous it borders on neurotic. Ready yourself to play the long game rather than strike out of fear or passion. Those messy emotions leave messy crime scenes that they simply cannot afford to make. Even if you walk away feeling the lesser, you’ve won simply by protecting yourself. Protecting your family, which matters more than anything else in the world. 

Furthermore: never sacrifice the art when you don’t have to. Taking a life is an elevation of the true lesser man and bringing him to heights he never knew in life. A stabbing or a strangulation in a grimey back alley isn’t a Botticelli. 

And: _what a waste of meat._

But Holden doesn’t think these rules had been made with this particular scenario in mind. When there’s a twin monster with his claws at your ribs, waiting for any sign of weakness to say you’re not worth his time.

Besides, selfishly— Holden is tired of the weight of his shadows.

He makes his decision.

“Kill him for me.” 

Morgan’s eyes snap to his. For a split second, Holden doubts himself, wonders if Morgan will lash out, will take this as a rejection and turn that fury on him, but when he gets a better look he sees those eyes aren’t angry or confused or disappointed. 

They’re... _hungry._

“What?” Morgan’s voice all but shivers.

“Kill him for me.” Holden says again. He goes for coy, almost an echo of Freddie’s coquetry at the cemetery this morning. “I want... I want to watch you.” He lifts his hand from the leather and sets it on Morgan’s chest, not pushing, not pulling, just. Resting. “Let me watch you.”

Morgan’s pupils _blow._

His hand darts up to snag Holden’s by the wrist, fingers hot as a brand, and he swoops in again to press his mouth to Holden’s, again too hard to be called a kiss, too fast for Holden to do anything but take it. Morgan pulls back only enough to exhale his words into Holden’s mouth. 

“I’ll make it good for you too, baby,” he breathes. And then he’s gone, prowling like a jungle cat towards their unsuspecting guest, and Holden, his heart racing, his fingers thrumming with power, leans against the door to keep it shut, and settles in to watch.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holden honey no

Holden would claim divine intervention, if he didn’t already know God had no hand in this. But how else can he explain it: Morgan builds him an ark, and it rains. 

The rain had started sometime around midnight, the time Morgan and Holden had hailed their separate cabs a few blocks from the bar, parting with a brush of fingers, and it’s still raining when Bill picks Holden up outside his apartment in the morning and drives them to the crime scene. Holden barely slept in the hours in between, too wired to rest, and instead sat up in his living room and watched the rain from the window, and his pulse trips with adrenaline in his veins even now. 

It’s pure luck Bill doesn’t tell him where they’re headed beyond a pre-coffee grunt of “D.C.,” because Holden knows he’s going to have to tell them he was there at the bar last night at some point— he just doesn’t want to be alone with Bill when he does. There’s an uncomfortable, squidgy sensation under his skin, something like guilt, that he’s trying to avoid as best he can. 

The car ride is silent beyond the downpour and the rhythmic squeak of the windshield wipers. Bill probably has questions about Holden’s night, but his partner is avoiding them, too. 

Wendy’s already waiting for them with an umbrella when they pull up to the curb. Behind her, the bar is now grey and innocuous in the early light, shut up and empty, and in a reversal of circumstances, there are flashes of light and voices echoing from the alleyway. 

“Bartender called it in as she was leaving, around four a.m.,” Wendy says in greeting. She has to shout a little to be heard over the rain as it collides with metal city roofs and the hard pavement beneath them. “They’ve got a tent set up around the body, but it’s still soup back there. Hope you didn’t wear your good shoes.” Ever prepared, she’s wearing the same rain boots she’d worn to Wolf Trap. 

They scurry from the bar awning to the alley, where there’s a large, white plastic tent squished up between the narrow brick walls, covered on all sides by tarp to try to keep out the deluge, though the ground is still buried an inch-deep in pooled rainwater, and rain continues to drum against the tarp overhead. They duck inside, joining the chaos of techs and the local cops. 

D.C. cops aren’t as friendly with the FBI as Virginia cops are: where Virginia precincts are congested with Quantico-hopefuls, D.C. cops are typically Quantico-rejects, overly bitter at being turned down and resolutely insisting they actually prefer the private sectors or the beat. Their little trio receives a number of glares as they enter the tent. 

“Morning, gentlemen,” Bill greets. It does little to soothe the tension, and Holden sees one officer roll his eyes; this audience isn’t going to like his upcoming confession. “Someone want to walk us through?” 

One man, clearly considered the leader, detaches himself from the pack with a put-upon sigh. “I’m Haggerson,” he begrudgingly introduces himself. He’s wearing plastic gloves, so he doesn’t offer a handshake. “Vic is a homeless guy: a junkie judging by the track marks, and they’re fresh, so we’re guessing he was high during the murder. Probably didn’t even see it coming.” He did, actually, and he’d tried to scream, a delicious gurgle of a sound— but Holden keeps this to himself. “We’re thinking cause of death is strangulation. Bruising indicates a cloth or a belt, but we haven’t found anything suspicious nearby.” There are a lot of trash bags nearby to search; Holden pities the tech who gets that job. 

“Bartender called it in?” Bill asks to confirm Wendy’s information, and assert he’s at least a little in the know.

“Yep. She said she’d seen this guy around a few times before, but he usually left her alone.” _Hmm._ Maybe his objection towards Morgan and Holden had been more projection than disgust. “But as you can see, he was hard to miss this time.”

The swarm of techs clears on cue, revealing their crime scene like curtains parting on a stage. Holden doesn’t need to rely on his imagination to picture how Morgan did it. This time, he’d had a front row seat. 

Morgan hadn’t used a belt, but his jacket. He’d shrugged it off and lunged in one smooth, sleek movement, shoving one sleeve into the bum’s mouth to gag him and wrapping the other one vise-tight around his neck and _yanking._ His muscles had writhed under his sleeves with the exertion. Holden glimpsed the yellowed whites of the bum’s eyes as they rolled back in his head, and when he’d collapsed with the tell-tale slump of asphyxiation, which the movies actually show pretty accurately most of the time, Morgan had unwound the jacket and tossed it Holden’s way. 

The leather was warm when Holden had caught it, but the attack had happened so quickly it gave Holden chills: Morgan was every inch the practiced, confident predator he claimed to be. They had to be hasty, but maybe that didn’t mean it couldn't still be beautiful. 

It’s as if Holden can still hear the echoes of Morgan’s voice reverberating off the edges of the bricks, detached and dark as it had been, coming from someplace deep in Morgan’s chest: _How do you want him, baby?_

And Holden’s reply: _I will wipe from the face of the earth the race I have created._

Morgan’s razor grin: _For I regret that I have made them._

The bum’s face has been separated from his body, like the Gardener boy, and is hung on the bar’s exterior wall, pierced through with a rusty nail emerging from the brick. Morgan had had the knife tucked away in his sock, which Holden found irrationally attractive, especially considering that ankle had been pressed to his own just moments earlier. 

Next he’d sliced down the torso, smashed the ribs with a nearby brick, and laid it all in a deep puddle beneath the face, for the chest cavity to fill with blood and water. The final image was striking: drowned, and forced to watch. 

Bill nods his thanks to Haggerson and turns to Holden and Wendy. “Alright, what are we thinking?”

It’s now or never. As quiet as he can, Holden confesses. “I was here last night.” 

But the space is too small, and the words ring like a struck bell, even beneath the rain. Every head pivots his way, even the techs.

“Excuse me?” Bill asks in the stunned silence. 

“I— Morgan and I came here for drinks, last night. After work. We didn’t see anything,” he hurries to explain. “We got here around ten, had a beer, stopped in a few other places around the block, and left around midnight.” Bill’s staring at him in disbelief, but Holden’s studying him in return, watching for signs of doubt and praying he buys the coincidence excuse even though Holden _knows_ Bill is more astute than that. Holden himself has said it a dozen times: there’s no such thing as a coincidence. 

Of course, Haggerson chooses that moment to mutter, voice heavy with implication, “Hell of a coincidence.” But the interjection is an unexpected blessing in disguise. If there’s one surefire way to have the FBI turn on you, it’s to cast blame— even vaguely or outlandishly— on one of their own. Sure enough, Wendy and Bill both spin on the D.C. officer, expressions hard and indignant.

 _“Excuse me?”_ Bill hisses again, only now it’s directed at Haggerson. “You have something to say? Some evidence you’ve suddenly uncovered? Because it certainly sounds like you’re trying to make an accusation.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not the one with some explaining to do,” Haggerson spits back.

Hackles rise throughout the tent. Holden rushes forward, deliberately clumsy as he inserts himself between them. No one feels threatened by a klutz. “Okay, okay, let’s bring it back, guys. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it,” he tells Bill. “And,” he says to Haggerson, “I’m happy to explain. If anything, this helps our investigation. I can serve as a witness to the interior of the bar— suspicious persons, the like.” And he will, but not to a crowd. “Can we have the space, guys, for a sec?” he says to Haggerson, and to the techs and cops behind him. He’s not currying any favor sending them out into the rain, but he needs some space to think. 

The FBI are the leads in this investigation, so his request is granted, and the cops and techs trudge out, leaving Holden to face his partners.

Bill is still stony-faced. Wendy, though, is looking at Holden with something new in her eyes, that he can’t quite read. He sets it aside for later.

“Can we work, now, please?” Holden asks, a little desperately. Wendy seems to reach a conclusion and gives him a firm nod. 

“I wonder if Haggerson’s right,” she says, and Holden’s about to protest, when she waves him off. “Not about you being suspicious, don’t be an idiot. I’m sure a fly could hurt you more than you could hurt it,” she says, though she only sounds like she’s half-joking, but Holden doesn’t have time to be insulted. “I meant about you being connected. What do all the crime scenes have in common, now?” She’s met with blank looks from them both, and she rolls her eyes. “The first two were to do with Crawford, but places our guy knew we’d show up. The third, though, is somewhere Holden already was.” 

Bill’s voice is strained. “You think he’s targeting Holden?” Holden tries to keep his expression controlled— so far this is working to plan, because if they’re looking at Holden, they won’t be looking at Morgan. And if he wants this to continue, Holden has to figure out a way to keep their eyes glossing over the man.

“I mean, who else had the strongest ties to Crawford?” Wendy asks. “Shepard himself named Holden in his speech at the funeral. _Crawford’s friend and successor.”_

“The Verger-Bloom connection is there too, though,” Bill says. “Could be someone taking it upon themselves to fulfill Lecter’s promise for revenge on Alana. Morgan Verger was at the funeral, and the bar.” It’s all but a growl.

 _Damn it, Bill._ Part of Holden is proud of his partner’s instincts, but a louder part is getting irritated. 

“Alright, we’ll look at both,” Wendy consents, though she darts an— apologetic?— glance at Holden. “Now, what’s our vic saying?”

The conversation quickly leaving him behind, Holden provides his theory on the landlocked drowning. “If it’s biblical again, I’m hazarding that it's the Great Flood.” 

“All this Old Testament bullshit,” Bill says darkly. “Does he consider himself God, or some kind of angelic servant?” _How about both?_ What was it Bedelia had said? _Successors and u_ _ _s_ urpers in abundance. _

Wendy poses another question. “If it’s still a courtship, what’s on offer this time?” 

“A clean slate,” Holden answers. “Washing away the transgressions of the past, so he’s chosen someone with an unfortunate life story to tell it through.” The beauty of this scene is sinking in more and more with each moment. Maybe Morgan was right— maybe it is fate. How else would they have stumbled upon the perfect unlucky soul for this verse of their gospel? It was like this man had been placed in the alley just for them, on that night, to consummate their connection in the most appropriate way.

“He can offer a reset,” Wendy hums. She studies Holden again, and he shifts on the balls of his feet. “If it is for you, what past of yours is he offering to wipe away?” 

Holden opens his mouth to— say what, exactly?— but Bill clears his throat loudly, and jerks his head towards the flap of the tent. “If we want D.C. to ever talk to us again, we’ve got to let them back in. Let’s bring this back to the office. Holden can give his statement there.” 

Bill doesn’t wait for agreement; he strides off to let the officers and techs know they have run of the place again, and then presumably heads to the car to sulk and wait for Holden. Wendy gives Holden a look that can only be described as pitying, because she’s not the one who has to make the hour drive back to Quantico with Bill.

“He’s just protective,” she reminds gently, as the soaked techs come in. “You know that.”

Tiredly, Holden nods, and goes to face his partner. 

He knows what’ll be waiting for him. It’s a scene Holden is well-acquainted with: on road school, when a suspect was giving them a runaround, or when Holden had said something particularly ill-timed or oblivious in front of a critical audience, he and Bill would go back to the car, and it was like Bill had suddenly grown too big for the cabin. He’s a large man to begin with, tall and bulky with muscle from the army and padding from domestic life, but when he’s disgruntled or angry it’s like he triples in size, like his body is expanding to hold all the boiling emotions. Sucking all the air out of the cramped space with every frustrated inhale. 

In situations like that, Holden would always keep silent and wait as long as necessary until Bill decided to chew into him. It’s best not to worry at the wound when you know it’s about to get worse. 

Having left the umbrella with Wendy, Holden hurries to the mouth of the alley, but he’s still drenched in seconds and half-blinded by the rain. Then he whirls the corner and nearly has his eye gouged out by another umbrella, held by a figure waiting just around the bend. Squinting into the temporary gap in the downpour to apologize, he comes face to face with Freddie Lounds. 

He startles. “Jesus—” _is this how you were with my dads?_ Holden almost, _almost_ asks. He’s seen the photos of his younger fathers, usually action shots captured of them emerging from buildings or across crime scene lines, but experienced firsthand is a different story. Freddie’s like a mosquito that won’t go away until she gets her mouthful of blood.

Holden just wants to get to the car and get this conversation with Bill over with, but Freddie has other ideas. She adjusts her umbrella over them so Holden is more properly situated beneath it and doesn’t have to duck so awkwardly, but the unfortunate side-effect is now they’re standing so close Holden can feel the warmth radiating off her skin. Her camera dangles on a leather strap around her neck, and Holden wonders what image she’d gotten of him. She’s still wearing her gloves.

“Is this the same killer as the cemetery?” she asks, skipping a greeting entirely, and Holden mentally rescinds his apology and barely resists sending his eyes heavenward. 

“Information regarding an ongoing investigation will be provided by the FBI directly at an appropriate time,” he recites protocol. “Please get out of my way, Freddie.” He tries to side-step her, but she just mirrors him, like they’re waltzing.

She continues as if he hadn’t spoken. “How about a statement regarding your relationship with Morgan Verger? Two friends out for a post-work drink, or something else?” 

Holden freezes. 

He knows he had spoken quietly enough in the tent, shielded by the roar of the rain, and regardless, she was too far from the scene for her to have heard him just then, which means— means— _no—_

His hands go numb, and Freddie reads his panic easily. But instead of pouncing at the scent of blood, her eyes soften, losing their dagger edge. 

“Don’t worry,” she says, her tone going unusually... _kind?_ Holden can’t place it exactly— his mind is racing as fast as his heart; had she seen them in the bar, or did she _see—?_ “TattleCrime isn’t a gossip rag. At least, not anymore,” she concedes. “I don’t expose people’s private lives for the fun of it.” 

No, she’s way too calm for her to have seen the events in the alley. She certainly wouldn’t be promising not to publish anything had she seen an FBI agent casually leaning back and observing a brutal murder like it was the evening news. No, she was probably hidden among the patrons in the bar, having followed Holden from his apartment, like she had earlier to the cemetery. He should’ve known he’d have a tail— _how had he missed her? His fathers always taught him to watch his back, damn it—_ but then again, switching cabs mid-way would’ve been even more suspicious. Let her instead think he’s just afraid of her having seen his— he still flushes at the word— date. It hadn’t even looked like a date, he’s sure, unless you count the under-the-table footsie, but she hadn’t followed them out to the alley. She hadn’t seen them.

Oh, if only she knew what she had missed, just on the other side of the wall.

“Does anyone else know?” she asks. 

His ears are still rushing with static, because what Holden means to say is, _there’s nothing to know, don’t be ridiculous, go away,_ but instead what comes out is, “Not the truth.”

“What’s the truth?”

“Why do _you_ need to know?”

“It’s my job, Agent Ford,” she chastises, but there’s still no heat in it. “Have you— have you considered you might be in danger?” Her tone wavers between hesitance and determination, like she’s not practiced at whatever she’s trying to say but she still needs to say it, and the words are clunky as she tries to spit them out. “This killer, he’s close, isn’t he? He could be targeting you, or Verger, or— the two of you, _together.”_

Disbelief colors Holden’s voice. “Are you… are you _concerned_ for my _safety,_ Miss Lounds?” 

Embarrassed, her eyes widen. “ _No,_ I’m just— look, I don’t want to see another one of you get,” flustered, she hisses through her teeth, “Get swallowed up by this thing.”

Holden stares at her. The irony of it, of course, doesn’t escape him. He has spent his whole career at the FBI trying not to let on who his parents are, and to a certain degree, he’s been successful. No one suspects that he was raised by two escaped cannibal convicts. And yet, _yet again,_ someone is looking at him but seeing _Will Graham._ The son shall not suffer for the sins of the father, and yet here he is, surrounded by people trying to assuage their long-festering guilt by thrusting it on _him._

Holden has never once resented his parents, but right now, he admits to being more than a little annoyed. Morgan really is the only one who can see Holden for who he is, isn’t he? 

Holden lets his bitterness seep into each word as it leaves his lips. “I don’t know what you think you saw last night, Miss Lounds, but it’s none of your business. And while your sudden interest is amusing, neither is my _safety,_ or that of Morgan Verger, and I highly suggest you find a different outlet for your too-late attempts to make amends for your past transgressions, because you won’t find any forgiveness _here.”_

He watches her embarrassment transform into mortification. He’s hit the nail on the head, and now he’s sealing the coffin. “You seem to have forgotten who I am. Yes, I’m in Graham’s shoes, but, as I’m sure you know, I _earned_ my place here. So let me remind you that it’s not particularly smart,” he bites out, “to piss off someone who thinks about killing people for a living.” 

He shoves past her, leaving her stunned on the pavement, and marches to the car. He barely feels the rain as it pounds against his skull, his shoulders— it’s nothing compared to the rage now crackling beneath his skin. He slams the door behind him as he slides inside, which provokes a sharp rebuke from Bill, and that’s just— that’s _it._ Holden has had _enough._

“What the fuck, Holden?” Bill snarls, and Holden whips his head to glare at him.

“What the fuck _what_ , Bill?” 

Bill’s speechless, for a moment; in all these spats, Holden has never fought back with genuine anger. But Bill isn’t one to back down from a challenge, not when he has a bone to pick, and his eyes narrow. “You know perfectly well _what_. Something’s going on with you. You’re distracted at crime scenes, you’re cavorting with the press—”

 _“Cavorting?”_

“You’re leaving work early, which I didn’t think you would do if it were the fucking Rapture, for Christ’s sake, and now you’re—” he grits his teeth. “Why the hell were you here last night?”

“I was having a drink,” Holden snaps, “Which last I checked, is a thing I’m allowed to do. This bar happens to be a halfway point, because Morgan lives in Maryland, in case you’ve forgotten.” At the mention of Morgan’s name, Bill flinches, and Holden zeroes in on the weakness, like the instinct to dig fingers into a bruise, or sink teeth into an exposed underbelly. So he does. “That’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it? You don’t care about the other shit— it’s Morgan that’s bugging you. The fact that I was here with him.”

“I don’t trust him, Holden! Now I have to bring a _Verger_ in for questioning—”

“You’ve interviewed a thousand psychos without batting an eye, don’t pretend that bullshit with me. No, I think what’s bugging you is the fact that I was here, on a _date_ , with a _man_. Yeah?” 

Bill’s eyes scurry away from Holden’s, and it just makes the indignation flare hot in Holden’s chest. It makes him want to lash out, hurt Bill the way Bill is hurting him. Holden leans closer across the already miniscule distance between them, and he does something he once swore he’d never do: he lifts the mask, just the tiniest, tiniest bit, and his voice is a growl that drags Bill’s eyes back, wide with shock. He wonders, distantly, what Bill sees, or if he’s still too _blind._

“Well let me disgust you even more, Bill— I _kissed_ him, and it’s _still_ none of your goddamn business. What are you going to do when I let him fuck me, huh? Gonna bust my door down?” The words aren’t his, he knows that. The words are Morgan’s, the man cackling wickedly in Holden’s head, but Holden still lobs them.

Bill’s face goes so red it’s violet. “I don’t give a fuck who you fuck, Holden, what I care about is you messing around with someone who could be connected to a serial killing—”

“You disliked Morgan long before today, and you know it. What I can’t figure out is _why._ ” Holden searches Bill’s eyes, but he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for. “Why you won’t let me _have this.”_

Bill’s voice is a roar that rattles the windows. _“Because I—”_

But then he stops. He stops, and he exhales like he’s been holding his breath for a century, slumping in his seat like a puppet whose strings have suddenly been cut. 

They’re still parked in front of the bar, in their tin shell that’s being dumped on like D.C. is about to turn into a river and sweep them all out to sea, and Holden almost wishes it would, because beneath the fury and irritation and exhaustion pulsing through him, there is the cold wash of disappointment, and rejection, and the disorienting sensation of being suddenly unmoored. His tether has been severed, the knife in his own hands, and Holden is adrift, as the rollicking waves grow taller and taller around him.

“Screw this,” Holden says, barely a whisper, because this used to be the safest place he knew and the ferocity of that loss demands he get out of there before he capsizes, “I’ll get a cab.” And he opens the door and lets the rain swallow him whole. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well that happened. I refer to this chapter as the Shit Goes Down chapter, for obvious reasons. It’s like they’re all just jumping from landmine to landmine. 
> 
> Holden and Morgan are quoting from the biblical book of Genesis, and the forty-day flood
> 
> also, my brain, writing this chapter: u can’t spell morgan without ORGAN


	9. Chapter 9

Holden wakes thinking about Ed. 

More specifically, he wakes thinking about sitting across from Ed: watching the way Ed holds his spine, like he has to think about slouching; the methodical way Ed eats pizza, in small bites contrary to his size; the way Ed talks like he’d already written the words he wants to say and now he’s just reciting his lines. Ed is an actor. Ed wanted an audience, and Holden gave it to him, and then went back for an encore, again and again. 

Holden has never envied the murderers they’ve interviewed— why would he? They’re behind bars. They weren’t smart enough not to get caught. They got their taste of freedom, sure, true freedom— they got that sweetness and that high, but it all came crashing down, and they lost everything for a memory. 

But right now, he kind of understands why they did it. Why they decided that sacrifice was worth it. And it’s not just the thrill of a captivated audience; it’s the satisfaction of a successful performance. He wakes thinking about Ed, and about sitting across from Ed, but in the haze of his dream the stage reverses, and he turns and sees not Bill, but Morgan sitting beside him at that metal table. The two of them aren’t much different than poor Ed, but they’re the ones who get to walk out of there, their audience none the wiser of the truth just under their noses. 

His whole life, Holden has been pretending to be something other than what he is, when he should be  _ celebrating _ what he is, and what golden opportunity he’s been given to explore it to his heart’s content, and now— now, he has his scene partner. 

There’s a flicker of a thought about his fathers, but he shoves it aside with his bedsheets and goes to start his day, feeling lighter than he has in months. 

He has an objective: sooner than later, they’re going to request Morgan come in to answer some questions, and Holden has to figure out how to be one step ahead of  _ himself. _ Because there’s no way they’re going to let Holden sit in on that interview, but he does have a card he can play. They’re going to look the direction he points them, and he’s going to point them away from Morgan, and himself. He just has to figure out how.

He’s not due at the office today— he got a call from Wendy last night saying they need to do some footwork, so she’s headed down to the morgue for their gravesite John Doe, while Bill is circling back to the bar now that the rain has stopped, since the D.C. cops seemed to like him well enough. Holden makes a vague offer to comb through the Gardener autopsy report again without really intending to do so, but Wendy sees right through it, judging by how she casually suggests he put some space between himself and Morgan Verger for a little while.  _ For the sake of the case,  _ she tells him. He politely assents.

And it’s not even a lie. He doesn’t have plans to see Morgan today; instead, he has a meeting with his mother. 

In his bedroom mirror, as he pulls on his jacket, his fingers hesitate only for a second before he knots Morgan’s tie around his throat. He takes a moment to admire the way the silver compliments his skin tone before he’s out the door. 

The BSHCI is less imposing this time around. Holden smiles sunnily at the pinched secretary and the orderly who leads him to Alana’s office, where he again finds her seated on the couch. She doesn’t have her notes with her this time, though. Instead, she’s gazing out one of the ceiling-high windows, still as the furniture itself, but Holden suspects she’s not inspecting the grounds. He clears his throat lightly when she doesn’t turn to the sound of the opening door; startled, she flinches, but covers it quickly as she faces him.

“Holden, hello. Come in.” She tilts her head like a bird as she studies him. “You’re in a good mood today.”

It’s true; despite the chaos of yesterday, it’s like the rain cleared away his anger during the night. He’s finally getting his chance to revel in the high of his and Morgan’s victory. He takes his seat beside her. “It’s been a good weekend.”

There’s a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and Holden knows he’s about to get another question Alana already knows the answer to: “Work or play?”

“Can’t it be both?” he dodges, but Alana pretends he’s answered anyway.

“Morgan was asking about you,” she tells him, and her eyes flicker to his tie, meaning her son either told her about their evening (sans murder), or it’s time for that later-date conversation she promised. “He doesn’t know about these meetings,” she clarifies, to Holden’s unasked query, “but he was wondering when you’d be joining us for dinner again.”

“I’d love to, any time you’ll have me.” The thread of an idea starts to stir. Holden keeps his voice light as he follows it. “Does Margot know about our conversations?”

“No,” Alana replies, and there’s something evasive in her eyes. Morgan’s not the only one keeping secrets in this family. “She does know I’m here, though. I don’t care much for being in the house when it’s just me. The hospital is more… familiar,” she says, and picks at a fuzz on the arm of her couch with a fond smile, and Holden’s reminded that she must sometimes feel like an outsider in her own home, too: it’s the Verger Estate, after all. Morgan took her last name in hyphenate, but the legacy didn’t.

He wants to ask why she’s decided to hide their meetings, but he squashes the urge for the sake of his plan.

“Where is she?” 

“She spends most of her time at the equestrian club,” Alana says. “She’s been a member since she was old enough to walk, and there’s not a very good one in Napa. So whenever we’re back she’s there from dawn to dusk.”

The threads gather, but Holden plays innocent. “Horses have always scared me,” he diverts with a huff. Alana arches an eyebrow.

“Did you have any animals growing up?”

“Just dogs.” 

If she registers the parallel, she doesn’t comment. “Do you have one now?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. I’m gone too often, it wouldn’t be fair to them.”

“But you want one. A nomadic lifestyle isn’t for everybody.”

“It’s what I’m used to,” he shrugs. “To be honest, I don’t very much like being home, either. I prefer the work; wherever it takes me.”

“What if you had someone waiting for you at home? Would that be a bigger motivation?”

Instead of dismissing it, Holden lets himself consider it. He thinks of his fathers: in their household, every activity was a partner activity. Cooking, shopping, killing, sitting by the fire to read after dinner. The only time they had their solitude was his tėtis’ art, and his dad’s fishing, and even then, he’s sure they were in each other’s palaces, conversing across the miles. “I don’t know if I would ever choose a partner who’d sit around waiting. I’d rather have them beside me.”

“What about a partner who is gone as often as you are?” It’s obvious who they’re talking about now, and Holden can’t quite suppress his smile. He lets himself picture that, too.

“That might work,” he concedes softly. “I’ve never had the occasion to find out.”

“He looks like you,” Alana points out. Another non-sequitur, but Holden follows the jump easily, and it makes him chuckle, if a little self-consciously. He’d examined himself in the mirror this morning as he’d shaved, wondering if he should grow his hair any longer, or give facial hair another try. He’d liked the scrape of Morgan’s stubble along his jaw.

“You must think I’m a narcissist.”

She only hums. “Or looking for self-acceptance.”

Holden blinks. “What?” 

“There are a number of reasons why we select a friend or significant other,” Alana says, as she leans back on the cushions, “but you’d be surprised how often it’s based on aesthetic similarities. Perhaps you’re looking for self-love, by loving a separate self.”

It takes a second for the explanation to sink in, and even longer to formulate a response. “That’s not very…” the words fail him. 

“What? Romantic?” Alana’s mouth twitches. “Loving someone else can be an expression of self-love, can’t it? Finding someone who can care for you is a defense mechanism against the ache of loneliness. A very natural defense mechanism, instilled in us from the dawn of humanity. The pack has a higher chance of survival than the lone wolf.” 

Startled by her bluntness more than anything, he’s thrown once more, and is left scrambling for a foothold. “You think I’m lonely?”

She doesn’t bat an eye. “Aren’t you?”

And Holden… doesn’t have an answer. A life with a secret identity might be isolating, but he’s always had his fathers a phone call away, and later, Bill, and Wendy. But… when he went home to his quiet apartment, did he even let himself feel the  _ emptiness _ of it, before turning around and going right back out on the road? Was there any difference between his empty rooms and the empty cells waiting beneath their feet?

But now— now he has Morgan, in whatever capacity it is that they have each other.  _ Right? _

Or is he still just looking for something to fill the silence? 

Alana, probably sensing his mini-existential crisis, changes the subject. “Think about it, and let’s switch gears a little bit. I didn’t think it appropriate after our little tour last time, but I still want to talk to you about the night in Wolf Trap.”

He mentally shakes himself, and pulls a little tighter on the slackened strings of his mask, even if it still settles a little off. This, he needs to be present for. “You said you don’t believe they’re really dead,” he says, and it’s an accusation, but she doesn’t take offense.

“Yes, but  _ you _ do. Walk me through what happened.”

Holden thinks of Ed and his rehearsed words, sucks in a breath, and begins. “Graham escaped from custody, but showed up at my apartment and killed my protective detail before the office could alert me. He gagged me and brought me to Wolf Trap in my own car. He didn’t say a word the whole drive— no evil monologuing, if that’s what you were expecting.”

“You didn’t fight him?” There’s skepticism in her voice, which no one had ever aimed at him while he’d given his statements, because why would they think to suspect an agent of the FBI, with the Bureau’s ugly past finally dead? But Alana wears distrust like a second skin.

“At first I grabbed a knife in my kitchen, but he had a gun. I figured it was useless.” 

“Did you think he was going to kill you?”

“I… I believed there was a possibility I would get hurt that night,” Holden amends, rather than outright lie. “But I also knew I wasn’t what he was really there for. He and Lecter were focused on Crawford, not me. If they did kill me, it would’ve been collateral damage rather than intent.” 

“Would you have forgiven him?”

Honestly, a conversation with Alana— with  _ any _ of the Verger clan, he’s learning— is like verbal whiplash. “What?”

“If Will had killed you, would you have forgiven him?”

It’s obviously a question he’s never considered— he wasn’t in harm’s way that night from Crawford, and his fathers would certainly never raise a finger against him. But maybe… maybe she’s not asking for him. Maybe she’s asking for herself. 

He thinks about Crawford, rather than his fathers, as he answers as truthfully as he can.

“I… I don’t want to die,” he says, slowly, as the words come to him. He had handed Crawford that knife  _ knowing _ the man would kill himself before he killed Holden, but there was always a sliver of possibility, however infinitesimal, that he might have chosen to fight and take Holden out with him. Holden had  _ felt  _ invincible, standing over him, his fathers at his side, but that doesn’t mean he was. “And I didn’t want to die that night, because I… I have work to do, still. So maybe I wouldn’t have? Forgiven him, I mean. Not if he took away something I wanted.” Alana would never forgive anyone who took away her fragile peace, but then again— all peace is fragile, isn’t it? 

“And what do you want?” she asks. “That evening demonstrated that you have a highly dangerous profession, and I’m sure it wasn’t the first incident of its kind, and it certainly won’t be the last— and yet you’re still there, answering every call and putting yourself in the line of fire. You have a new killer roaming, don’t you?”  _ Oh, if only she knew. _ “The  _ Christus _ scene you mentioned. What happens when you meet the one case that you can’t escape?” 

As she speaks, her face morphs in Holden’s mind’s eye, features contorting and shifting like headlights passing a window to become Freddie, then Wendy, then Bill, then Morgan, back to Alana. Everyone has been asking the same question, he realizes. And Holden doesn’t know if he has an answer.

He looks down at his hands. “I don’t know,” he admits, faintly. 

“No one can figure it out for you except yourself,” she says, with a heavy exhale. “I learned that the hard way, trying to help someone down a road they didn’t want to walk.”

“Will Graham,” he says— his turn for a not-quite-question. 

“Will Graham,” she echoes. “Hannibal and Jack and I were yanking on his arms like a toy we all wanted to play with, and Hannibal won.” 

Like Will had been nothing more than an easily-manipulated prize. Like he hadn’t made his own decisions as to the life he wanted to lead. Alana has never had to stand on her own cliff’s edge, Holden knows, so she thinks it must be someone else who pushes you over, rather than your own choice to jump. 

But Will had let them think that, until he knew he could resurface with Hannibal’s hand firmly in his, and no one would be there to separate them. He did it for his family.  _ Not for a stage, _ that voice murmurs, but Holden’s following a different train of thought.

“You wouldn’t forgive them, if they took away what you love,” he says. For Will’s sake, he wants to make her face the question. “But have you forgiven yourself, for trying to take what they loved?” 

Her eyes widen, and for a long, suspended moment, they sit in silence. These are just conversations, after all, but he has a feeling she hadn’t expected him to make her look anywhere she didn’t want to; but he’s feeling bold. He’s borrowing her son’s bravado, trying it on for size, and he wonders if she’s looking at him and seeing Morgan. Maybe even a side of Morgan she hadn’t considered.

When she finally replies, it’s a half-answer. “I will do whatever is necessary to protect my family,” she says. “Wouldn’t you?”  _ A question for a question. _

He doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Of course.” What he doesn’t expect is the tsunami wave of guilt that follows, that little voice demanding to be heard.

His parents didn’t raise him so painstakingly just for him to go and implode everything they’ve worked for him to have, for— for what? A man he just met, barely a week ago? The short-lived thrill of applause?  _ But,  _ Holden argues his imagined parents, surely Morgan is family now, right? Someone he can trust? Even the resemblance insists upon it _. Doesn’t it? _ Holden shoves aside the fairy tale warnings of changelings and dopplegängers that tear through his mind, violent-fast. 

_ But Bill and Wendy were your family first,  _ that traitorous voice still whispers from somewhere deep inside, despite the silver gag Holden had tried to shove down its throat. 

No. No, Morgan  _ has _ to be family. You don’t risk this much for someone who isn’t your destiny.

“Then forgiveness is arbitrary,” he barely hears Alana say over the roar in his ears. “Shall we end there, today?” It’s not really a question, but Holden nods regardless, numbly. It takes him a second more to trust his legs enough to stand, though she doesn’t move. 

The threads of his plan are flapping in the breeze, and Holden hurries to collect them, knowing what he should ask. He tries to keep the waver from his voice as he straightens his jacket. “Are you heading out too?” 

Preoccupied with her own internal furor, she’s perfectly oblivious to his, and Holden can see the strain at her mouth when she smiles. “No, I have some work here still. And the Estate can be especially creepy in the evening.”

He returns the smile as best he can. “Have a good night, ma’am.” 

He glances back once at the door, but she’s already staring out the window again. 

Instead of taking the exit south, back to Virginia, Holden turns north. 

He’d repaired his pocket knife after his fathers left, and started keeping it in his glove box, within easy reach. He fishes it out now and sets it on the passenger seat, where it sits gleaming in the afternoon sun as he heads towards his destination.

Holden was a good fisher, but he didn’t enjoy it as much as Will— when he was a gangly teenager still mastering control of his limbs, he didn’t like the relentless shove of the stream at his legs as the current tried to knock his feet out from under him. He’d appease his dad with a few throws of the line, but then he’d trudge back to the banks. Will didn’t like it when he wandered too far out of sight, so he’d go up instead of out, climbing trees as high as he could before the branches dipped dangerously beneath his weight.

You wouldn’t think it by looking at him— you wouldn’t think a lot of things, really— but Holden took to the wilderness like he’d been born in it. After all, it had its tells, just like people. Which plants were poisonous, which were edible. Which branches to trust, which to avoid, which step of underbrush was stable and which would find you knee-deep in bog water. How to be quiet, even over the snapping of twigs. Though he’s learned over the years that sometimes the wild is easier to understand than people. 

Sometimes he could stalk Will from the trees for eons before Will noticed, but Holden had never been able to sneak up on Hannibal. Hannibal knew the intricacies of forests better than Holden could ever dream of. He’d been taught its language in the untouchable memories of his childhood. 

Even though the house stands empty— Alana at the hospital, Margot at her club, Morgan at work— Holden parks his car a few hundred yards from the mouth of the Verger Estate, so his tires won’t leave tracks on the gravel drive. On foot, he cuts smoothly through the trees circling the land, picking a sizeable rock from the underbrush as he goes, and shifting his knife in his other hand. Shadows twist and billow and shrink around him. Unseen eyes lurk through the leaves. 

To stay ahead of their prey, his fathers had often employed a strategy, one that Holden himself had played with Jack Crawford: the next clue you find will point you  _ away _ from your culprit. But this isn’t his fathers’ design anymore. Holden is alone in these woods.

The pig farm looms ahead.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's gotta get bad before it gets good

He’s late to work the next day. 

It’s the first time he’s late in his entire employment with the Bureau, and it kind of feels like playing hooky, even though he’s only about an hour behind by the time he leaves his apartment. The call came straight from Shepard that morning, but Holden had just stood in his living room and listened to the answering machine record the message. Watched the cassette spin on its tracks, and thought of an interview. 

He’s wearing Morgan’s tie again, for a visual aid to today’s performance. It’s a pale, unobtrusive silver, but its stitching feels as vibrant as a scarlet letter as he strolls into Quantico and arrives to the chaos. 

A harried intern dashes up to him before he’s even fully through the door. “They’re waiting for you downstairs, sir,” she says breathlessly, before scurrying off again. Behind her plays out an eerily familiar scene: the bullpen is a madhouse, agents running and papers flying, and Holden’s half-expecting to turn the corner and find Jack Crawford waiting to tell him Will Graham has returned. 

But he isn’t, of course, so Holden takes a breath, and pulls on his best bewildered face. _Showtime._

When he gets off the elevator, the door to the BSU office at the end of the hall is closed, but a light shines out from underneath, occasionally interrupted by unseen feet, and as Holden nears he can hear the commotion behind it— faint at first, like a TV playing in an adjoining motel room, but growing louder with each step. 

The basement is usually Holden’s sanctuary. Until this moment, stepping into their dim little wing had been the closest thing Holden had to coming home. Here, all the dark things in his head could come out to play, and even if he couldn’t act on them, he could voice them, and pretend their words didn’t belong to him but to their subjects and suspects. Like standing too close to someone smoking a cigarette after quitting and inhaling deeply; a disjointed high, but a high nonetheless. 

But not today. Today, there’s a sacrifice on the altar of Holden’s own making.

It’s Shepard who barrels towards him when Holden steps through the door. “Where the hell have you been?” he shouts, and Holden falters, eyes widening. 

“What do you mean? My— my alarm clock shorted out. What’s going on?” Holden asks, as Shepard grabs his bicep and yanks him forward. The room is crawling with techs, dusting and spraying and photographing, and Bill and Wendy are standing in the center of the room with their arms folded over their chests, looking like kids who’ve been told not to touch anything. Wendy straightens when she catches sight of Holden, relief stark in her eyes, but Bill’s gaze barely skitters across Holden’s before it’s gone again. 

_"Wh_ _at’s going on?"_ Shepard mimics, like a schoolyard bully. “What’s _going on_ is someone decided to make fucking _paté_ on your desk on the one morning no one knows where you are! We were two fucking minutes from sending out _another_ calvary to find your ass, thinking you’d turn up in a ditch somewhere with a Glasgow smile!”

“Glas— _what?”_

_"This,_ ” Shepard snaps, depositing Holden in front of his own desk, “is _what’s going on.”_

Another positive _(at least for Holden)_ aftereffect of the famed _(third? fourth? honestly, it’s beyond embarrassing for the FBI now)_ escape of Will Graham from custody: Quantico’s weak spots have been flayed wide open, and while agents have been scrambling to fill them like cracks in a dam wall, the water has already spurted through, and all it took was some shuffled paperwork for Holden to keep some holes open. It wasn’t particularly hard for Holden to follow the reverse of the route his dad had navigated from his cell block only a few weeks before, trusting his feet in the dark back halls of Quantico like trusting his feet in the forest. And another perk of being exiled to the basement is there are no cameras down there, either. For all they know, a ghost laid this scene. And a ghost did.

After three crime scenes of Morgan having all the fun, Holden has painted quite a pretty picture, if he does say so himself, but he doesn’t have time to admire it now. Instead he thinks of his dad, and of Randall Tier. 

“Liver,” Holden manages, though his voice sounds strangled. 

“What?”

“You said— you said paté. Paté is liver. This is a tongue.” 

Shepard stares at him like he’s wishing it really had been Holden’s tongue on the table, but Wendy steps forward and deters any threat of carnage. “What kind of tongue? I told them not to worry about you,” she tells Holden. “That it’s too big to be human.” 

The tongue really is, stretching about a half a foot long and thick as a man’s wrist across the wood of Holden’s desk, and it’s pale and sinewy, meticulously scrubbed of the gore of separation from its head. Holden hadn’t bothered with anything too trussed up: just the tongue, adorned with a thin silver ribbon— the same ribbon that had been wound around Morgan’s tie box. Placing it in a Bible would’ve been too direct a reference to the Ripper, and Holden didn’t want to make those connections if no one else had. He can still keep them looking safely away from his fathers.

“It’s definitely animal,” Holden says, “Maybe cow, or pig or something.”

“How the fuck did it get on your desk?” Shepard demands, and Holden jumps. 

“I didn’t put it there,” he says defensively, and Shepard rolls his eyes so hard it must hurt.

“No shit. Unless you’ve got a fucked-up taste in lunch,” —it takes _absolutely everything_ Holden has not to laugh. Fucked-up lunches, indeed _—_ “I highly doubt you’ve turned into a stealthy little psychopath overnight,” Shepard growls. “No, some son of a bitch broke in last night, dropped off your little gift, _and_ got away without a single camera picking him up, and I want to know how and why _now.”_ He raises his voice so that the command carries to the whole room, not just aimed at Holden, and the already sky-high tension in the space ratchets up a few more notches, the techs scurrying even faster than before. Holden knows all the man’s bluster is hiding his utter panic: this close on the heels of the Crawford fiasco, and the halls of Quantico are under siege once more. There can’t be a strike three for Shepard to escape unscathed. 

But at the moment, Holden could _kiss_ him: his “little gift” comment has both Wendy’s and Bill’s eyes flying to Holden’s throat, where the tie hangs like a shiny noose. In Holden’s peripheral vision he can see Bill’s fingers curl to fists. 

“You said… it could be a pig’s?” Wendy asks, carefully, and Holden nods, before letting his eyes widen a delayed second later as he pretends to catch on to what she’s implying.

He shakes his head vehemently. “No. _No._ That’s— that’s ridiculous,” he says, but Wendy’s already exchanging glances with Bill.

 _“What’s_ ridiculous?” Shepard growls. When no one moves immediately to answer, he slams his fist down on the desk, making everyone leap a foot in the air, and a few techs shoot deathly glares their way. “Spit it out!” 

There’s a flutter of hesitation, before Wendy says, “Morgan Verger. We were going to bring him in for questioning: he has connections to the crime scene in D.C. But he’s… well, he’s left a gift for Holden on his desk before, while we were out of office.” 

“And his family owns a meat processing company. One that specializes in _pigs,"_ Bill says. He’s doggedly avoiding Holden’s eyes. And so is Shepard, now, as he stiffens beside Holden. The unspoken connotations hang heavy in the air between their cluster, but a moment later, Shepard’s shaking his head, just as Holden did. 

“No, Ford’s right, that’s absurd. I lunch with Verger’s mother,” Shepard says, and Holden’s head snaps up, not having to pretend at shock this time, “and that family’s clean as a whistle.”

This news is a surprise for Wendy, too. “You lunch with Dr. Bloom?” she asks. Holden’s mind is whirring— there’s no doctor/patient confidentiality between him and Alana, so of course his suspicions go instantly to the early days of his fathers’ courtship, when Hannibal was still handing over his analyses of Will to Crawford over three-course meals. Has Alana been talking about him? Or— he feels the dagger-sharp sting of betrayal— did Shepard ask her to keep an eye on Holden? He’d wondered initially if Wendy would be Alana’s eyes in the FBI skies— Alana’s own iteration of her past self, as present-Alana fills Hannibal’s shoes— but _Shepard?_

But no, Shepard’s not that smart. He has no more doubts about Holden than— well, Holden’s not sure who else. It seems everyone’s suspecting him of something these days. 

Shepard nods curtly. “She’s shown an interest in investing in the BSU’s research, if you must know. Residue from her past work with the Bureau.” Holden can practically hear Alana in the explanation, knowing they’re her words leaving Shepard’s lips. At the disbelief on his agents’ faces, Shepard splutters. “You should be thanking me. I’m doing _your_ damn jobs, getting you investors!” 

Wendy brandishes her best pacifying tone. “Sir, all due respect, but we still can’t ignore those connections.”

Shepard’s expression turns an impressive shade of red before he finally throws up his hands, and at that moment Holden’s pretty certain Shepard is crushing on Alana, no doubt seeing her as the beautiful, wealthy widow in distress. _Sorry, sir,_ he thinks. _She’s not batting for your team._

“Fine,” Shepard grumbles. “Find out if Verger has an alibi. Damn it, find out if all of them have alibis, they’re all far too close to the Lecter-Graham shitshow. Now I have to go make a very awkward phone call, so you deal with this mess yourselves. And Ford—” Shepard’s face, somehow, turns even more red. He can’t be outspokenly homophobic, because he’d be insulting Alana’s son in the same breath— and Alana, not that he knows— but Holden can still see the disgust, unhappy and uncomfortable, in the set of Shepard’s shoulders. “Keep your personal life out of the office, for fuck’s sake.” 

He storms out, and Holden faces his partners. Holden, of course, knows Morgan’s alibi is that he came home from work and spent the evening with his mothers, but there’ll be a gap between midnight and dawn, with only his mother’s word to protect him. But it’s alibi enough: the FBI will look closer, and find nothing, because there’s nothing _to_ find. So now for the next step. 

“It’s not Morgan,” Holden says. He pitches his voice low, so the techs can’t overhear. “Think about it— why would he do something so incriminating? He’d _know_ we’d make the connection to the pig farm, and the— the tie,” he says, giving his voice a little waver at the end. It works; Wendy’s expression is all pity. 

Bill’s, however, is not. “There’s no such thing as a coincidence,” Bill says, in a bitter echo of the scene in the bar alley. He kicks a leg of one of the desks, then waves apologetically at another disgruntled tech for disturbing the scene. 

“You’re right, there’s not,” Holden agrees. “But maybe… maybe this message isn’t for me.” 

Wendy’s brow furrows. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe our unsub knows Morgan’s my friend,” Holden says, letting the tiniest break linger before the word _friend,_ a break that makes Bill’s jaw clench _._ “The other crime scenes didn’t feel like threats, but this one does. It’s very _Godfather,_ isn’t it? All ‘be careful what you say, who you talk to’?” 

“You’ve seen _The Godfather?"_ Bill asks, apparently forgetting he and Holden aren’t on friendly terms at the moment, but Wendy’s speaking before Holden can spare him a glare. 

“Our guy is calling Morgan a pig?” she asks. 

Holden sighs, then, scrubbing a hand down his face in a show of confused exhaustion. “I don’t know. Maybe?” 

Bill clears his throat. “The other three were all religious references. Is this one, too? I don’t remember anything in the Bible about some guy getting his tongue ripped out.”

But Wendy nods. “I was thinking the same. It might not be a literal reference, but a symbolic one: _tongues_ as in language, as in—”

“—The Tower of Babel,” Holden finishes for her. “But is our guy saying that we speak the same language, or now… we don’t?”

“Have we fallen out of favor,” Wendy muses. “Has the offer of partnership expired.” 

They stand in silence as the significance sinks in. Their ticking clock of this investigation has suddenly run out. 

But despite the worried faces of his partners, inside, Holden’s gloating. They’ll look at Morgan and find nothing, and then they’ll see him as a victim, just like Holden. They’ll be free. 

“Shit,” Bill sighs. “This guy is either in the fucking wind now, or he’s about to reach his damn crescendo.”

“We need to get to the Verger farm,” Wendy declares. “Holden, you shouldn’t be with us because this is definitely considered a conflict of interest, but given that this guy is either after you or Morgan, and your last protective detail was, well,” —she doesn’t say the words, but everyone remembers how that turned out— “I think you should come, too. Just don’t— don’t talk to anyone, okay? Especially Morgan.” She looks between Bill and Holden, then, because of course she’s not oblivious to the change in their dynamic, both of them stiff and avoiding eye contact, but Holden pinpoints the moment she decides it can wait until later, and she nods, once. “You’ll ride with me.”

The FBI descends upon the Verger Estate in a rapturous fleet of tech vans and agents, and he and Wendy, Bill following them in his own car, arrive just a second behind. 

Shaking Bill and Wendy is much easier than Holden had expected. Since Holden isn’t allowed in the farm, where the FBI is going hunting for a tongueless pig, both available agents are hurried away by the techs as soon as they step out of the car. Wendy tosses Holden the keys and gives him a look that clearly means to stay put, but the second she’s turned away, Holden’s rushing for the front door of the mansion.

It’s flung wide open, a few techs and scruff-work agents already inside to talk to the occupants. It’s late enough in the morning that Holden knows Morgan is at work, but he thinks Shepard’s awkward phone call had been to Alana rather than his superiors, and sure enough, he finds the lady of the house standing in the back parlor, expression coldly furious as an agent takes her statement.

She sees Holden as he enters, and she cuts the agent off mid-word and storms over to him. Her blood-red manicured fingers wrap around his arm and pull him down a labyrinth of hallways, until they’re in front of the samurai sword he’d seen that first night, when his world had turned upside down. 

“What is going on?” she hisses. “What’s this about a pig tongue?” So Shepard had called her. 

“We found it on my desk in the office this morning,” Holden answers. He makes his expression as earnest as possible; she needs to believe he’s an ally in this, or it’ll go wrong irreparably and _fast_. He’s protecting his family— _their_ family— even if he can’t tell her so, because she doesn’t know _why_ they need protecting, and she can’t know, not about her precious Morgan, and certainly not about Holden. “But I know it’s from none of you, obviously. They won’t find anything, and they’ll be gone in an hour.”

But like he’d said, Alana wears doubt like a scaly second skin. She narrows her eyes. “They’re investigating my _family,_ Holden,” she says. The threat is plain: _I’ll do whatever’s necessary to protect my family._ And she doesn’t count Holden among hers yet. “What’s—”

At that moment, Margot appears at the end of the hall, dressed in riding gear and looking baffled, and Alana schools her expression whiplash fast, shifting from anger to innocent bewilderment. Alarm bells ring loud in Holden’s head again, because why would Alana feel the need to hide that protective anger from her own wife?

 _“Fix this,”_ she orders Holden from the corner of her mouth, before she’s hurrying to Margot, leaving Holden to stare after her.

Holden’s attention is yanked the other direction when a clamor sounds near the front of the house. He recognizes the raised voice immediately, and he scrambles towards it.

Morgan, dressed in a suit, is shouting at an agent standing in the threshold of the front door. Alana must have called him back from work as soon as she’d hung up with Shepard. “What the hell is going on here?” he yells, just as he spots Holden whirl around the corner, and his expression goes _lethal_. 

Forgetting the agent, he stalks towards Holden, and for once, Holden can see not himself but Alana in the other man’s features, warped with wrath. 

“What the _hell_ is happening, Holden?” he demands again as he closes the distance, and Holden reaches for him, curling his fingers gently around the other man’s wrists like he’s soothing an animal— but instead of calming, Morgan uses the contact to herd Holden backwards, through an archway and into a room that, as Holden casts a hurried glance around them, looks like a library. Holden stumbles to keep his feet under him, gripping Morgan’s wrists hard for balance, and he can feel Morgan’s pulse racing beneath his fingertips. This isn’t anger, he realizes with a jolt of surprise. It’s _fear._ “Why the fuck are all these people here? _What did you do?”_

Holden blinks at the accusation. “What? No, it’s okay, this is a good thing,” he assures. For a moment he thinks he hears the echoing click of light feet on tile, but he casts a glance over Morgan’s shoulder and finds nothing. He opens his mouth to explain, but Morgan doesn’t let him utter a sound.

“A good thing? _A good thing?_ You’re supposed to keep them _off my fucking back,_ Holden, that was the deal, not usher them through the front fucking door,” he hisses. “How am I supposed to do God’s will if I’m rotting in a jail cell? How am I supposed to _set you free?”_ and then he’s reaching up, Holden’s hand still locked on his wrist, and before Holden can even think about fight or flight reactions, Morgan’s wrapping the length of Holden’s tie inside his fist and _yanking_. 

Fight it is. The tie is a vise, a shrinking noose, and the shock of the assault is a lightning strike, his thoughts tripping over themselves in a blur of _is this happening is this real_ but— thank God— his hands move of their own accord, and their soft touch turns to clawing as they grapple at Morgan’s wrists, nails digging into the meat to try and pry him _off_. But Morgan is strong, and braced for Holden’s reaction, and there’s no give as Holden’s lungs, deprived of oxygen, ignite.

Is this what Morgan’s victims saw? Morgan’s face swallows up his vision, black spots swarming like frenzied flies at the edges. The fabric cuts deep into Holden’s windpipe and pain sparks firecracker-hot through his lungs— but even worse is the heat of Morgan’s breath, blooming across Holden’s mouth, only now there’s no kiss to follow. 

Dully, a voice inside Holden that isn’t screaming, whimpers: _He didn’t use his hands._

Holden gags but Morgan doesn’t ease off, and the room is starting to spin around them. _“May I remind you,”_ Morgan growls, “that if I go down, you’re going down with me, _baby.”_ He spits the endearment, without a trace of the previous night’s tenderness. “And I swear to God, I’ll make sure your little friends go down with us, too.” 

Holden’s mind blanks. 

Everything had been going perfectly. Every word, every gesture, every blink had been painstakingly placed to lead Shepard and Bill and Wendy just to what he wanted them to think, to say— lead them to the Vergers to make them look away, lead them to Morgan and Holden _together,_ the target of an invisible monster, as elusive as God, but _this—_ he hadn’t expected this. 

He’d thought Morgan would have trusted him. Until this moment, Morgan has been so good at seeing through Holden’s eyes, seeing through him to the back of his skull, better than anyone had ever been— but this? The man, the animal in front of him here is blinded by panic, by fear. This man had grown so confident, so arrogant in his own invincibility that he lashed out at the first sign of failure. This man has his claws poised above Holden’s jugular, ready to turn against his pack the moment he senses weakness— or maybe, the moment someone else senses his. 

“Is that understood?” Morgan asks, voice quaking, and Holden nods, frantically, as best he can, and then Morgan releases him.

Holden collapses. Morgan’s wrists slide from his grip and cold air surges in to fill the vacated space. On his knees on the hardwood, Holden gasps raggedly for air, his fingers flying to his neck to undo the knot of the tie with hands shaking so violently it takes him another eternity before it finally comes free, and then he’s ripping the fabric away. It falls limp and soundless beside him, but Holden’s eyes are on his own hands where they’re pressing flat against the hardwood beneath him, holding him up: his nails are caked red with blood and shredded skin, and he knows there must be matching tracks on Morgan’s wrists. 

Holden wheezes. His heartbeat is deafeningly loud in his ears, but a sluggish echo plays in his head, like a record skipping: _is this real is this real is this real._

It can’t be. Once it feels like he’s not about to pass out, he cranes his head back to look at Morgan.

“They’re… they’re not looking at y-you. They think you’re a victim, like— like me,” Holden hears himself say. His voice is barely more than a rasp.

But Morgan looks down at him like Holden is a wad of chewed-up gum he’s found on his shoe. His eyes are black and flat, and that’s how Holden knows, this is terribly, painfully real. 

“They fucking better, _”_ Morgan snarls. “I want them _gone.”_ And then he turns on his heel, and Holden can only stare after him as he strides off, probably to find his mothers. 

Holden is stunned. The floor beneath him is giving in, crumbling away like sand, and all Holden can think is, however unwittingly, he has fulfilled a prophecy of his own making. 

After a century, he unsticks his hands from the ground and stands. He leaves the tie where it lies, a dead, crumpled snake. 

Unseeing, he drifts through the house, past the techs and agents, back to Wendy’s car. He flinches as the passenger door swings loudly shut behind him. He knows what he’s feeling, because his hands had shook with it only a few nights before, when Bill had yelled at him from the driver’s seat: the thousand-wasp sting of rejection, of betrayal, only now the driver’s seat is empty. 

Holden himself feels empty. A void has opened in his chest, and he’s falling through it, down and down and down. 

He doesn’t know when awareness comes back to him, the ugly pins and needles flooding like static through his limbs, but he blinks up at the Verger Estate, its stone walls high and impenetrable and unwelcoming. Holden would never have a place behind those walls. 

His eye is caught by a curtain fluttering in a second story window, a white veil brushed aside to reveal a figure. Still listless in his fog, it takes a moment before the features register, and at first he wonders if it’s Morgan, making sure Holden is doing as he’s been told— until he can see it’s Margot, peering down at him. It’s too far away for Holden to read her expression, but he knows she isn’t smiling. 

She watches him for a long moment, before she lets the curtain fall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic’s title comes from a Machiavelli quote: “One should never fall in the belief that you can find someone to pick you up.”
> 
> I also realized I never explained where the series title came from? It’s (another) Machiavelli quote: “At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently reclothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for.”
> 
> bc, y’know. public identities vs private identities. loving parents. food that is. uh. special.


	11. Chapter 11

He steals Wendy’s car. 

No, _ borrows.  _ He  _ borrows _ Wendy’s car. He’ll return it later, of course, and it’s not like she’s stranded, since Bill’s there with his and he’ll undoubtedly give Wendy a lift back to Quantico, but Holden can’t be there at the Estate a second longer, so he climbs into the front seat and switches on the ignition.

There’s a cartoonish cloud of gravel dust behind him as he peels away. Every hundred yards he puts between himself and the Estate is like another breath he can draw into his lungs, through his battered windpipe, and it feels dizzyingly good, even if he has no idea where he can go.

He can’t go back to Quantico, not yet. Shepard would either chew his ear off or Holden would find himself sitting in the basement alone, staring at the tongue that might as well be his own, he’s fucked this up so badly. He’d been so blinded by Morgan’s promises of freedom and thrill and— maybe— love, that Holden had thrown away not just everything he’d built for himself but what his  _ fathers _ had built for him, before he’d made certain he wasn’t choking in a house of smoke and mirrors. 

Mirrors. Morgan looked so much like Holden, that maybe Alana had been right on the money. He was just looking for acceptance, and from himself most of all. Anything to stave off the ache of loneliness, right?

Alone, with his past and his secrets and his desires, but— he had had a career, hadn’t he? Someplace to grow and flex his claws in privacy. And he’d had Bill, and Wendy. His fathers, a postcard or phone call away. He’s endangered them all. 

He feels the starburst of panic at realizing he’s left Wendy and Bill on the Estate with Morgan, but, he rationalizes in the next thought, Morgan wouldn’t try anything with so many agents buzzing around, and Wendy and Bill aren’t dumb enough to follow Morgan into an empty room like Holden was. They’re safe, for now, but Holden isn’t, even with every unseen mile he hurtles along down the highway. 

He doesn’t have anyone left. 

But then he passes the exit for D.C., and he remembers. He shoves his hands in his pockets, earning angry honks from the cars around him as his vehicle veers sharply over the highway lines, but he jerks the wheel back once he finds what he’s looking for. It’s crumpled, still there from when she first gave it to him and he’d clenched it in his fist like he could turn it to dust, but at least the number is still legible. He takes the next exit and speeds into who-knows-what town, and screeches to a stop in front of the first payphone he spots. 

He has history on his side once again, even if it’s the last thing he wants. Thirty years before his fathers had taken the same out, and now, it seems, it’s Holden’s turn.

He dials the number with trembling hands. 

The diner she picks is by Virginia Tech, far enough away from the route from the Estate back to Quantico that Holden isn’t too concerned about Bill and Wendy driving by and spotting her car in the parking lot. He orders a coffee from the bored waitress, even though he’s sure he’s too wired to drink it, and besides, his throat aches. God, it wasn’t even that long ago he was sitting in an identical diner with Bill, looking over photographs of a Ripper copycat, with no idea of what was ahead of them, and look at him now. 

He glimpses the curls first, even more blood-red and vibrant in the sunlight as Freddie crosses the parking lot and pushes through the door. She scans the mostly unoccupied booths, and he gives a weak wave when she spots him. 

She hadn’t pressed him for details over the phone when he’d called and asked if she could meet, his voice thankfully mostly normal, if a little hoarse at the edges— she had only agreed and rattled off a location, but in person her expression is understandably suspicious as she walks over. She still has her gloves on, he notes, and she keeps them on even as she shrugs off her coat and slides into the booth. 

“Agent Ford,” she greets curtly. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you after last time.” 

“I wasn’t expecting to call,” he admits. He doesn’t have to fake his watery smile; he doesn’t feel like faking anything, frankly. He can feel his adrenaline plummeting, and he wonders if this is how you’re supposed to feel as you’re facing down the waves and rocks rapidly rising to meet you: tired and resigned to the doom that awaits you in the depths. 

Freddie is perceptive, like any journalist worth her salt. Her eyes dart to his throat, where no doubt the darkening bruise from the now-absent tie is peeking above the fabric of his rumpled collar, then to his hands, that Holden had tried scrubbing raw in the diner bathroom but which still show traces of red beneath the nails, and her expression shifts to wary concern. The waitress returns before she can ask any questions, though, and Holden gestures towards the menu.

“Order whatever,” he says. “It’s on me.” 

“Damn right it is,” Freddie mutters, but she orders coffee and a cup of soup, and Holden realizes he has no idea what time it is, what meal is closest. The sun is high in the sky, the clouds too wispy to provide any shade, and it’s funny, that after the deluge, the world can look exactly the same but be so completely different.

“So,” Freddie begins. She clasps her gloved hands in front of her on the greasy laminate table. “What’s this about?”

Yeah, maybe he’s avoiding the confession, but Holden can’t stop himself from asking: “What’s with the gloves?” 

If he could see her knuckles, he’s sure they’d blanche, as her grip tightens enough that the leather squeaks. Like the leather of Morgan’s jacket, wrapped around the homeless man’s throat. Holden feels sick. 

“My hands get cold,” she answers, after a pause. “Raynaud’s, actually. Heard of it?”

Holden considers for a moment, thinking back to evenings spent flipping through Tėtis’ medical journals and being quizzed on anatomy over baking lessons, before nodding. “The blood vessels narrow. Usually triggered by touching cold things, or by stress.” The flesh goes snow white, but there’s none of the risk of frostbite. You just rub your hands together until they warm up again. And it doesn’t affect the flavor of the meat. 

She nods. “I’ve had it since I was little. Gloves make it easier.”

“Especially when living in a place like Virginia.”

She huffs, ringlets shivering. “The climate isn’t the most forgiving,” she agrees. “But I’m pretty sure you didn’t ask me here to talk about the weather.”

Holden sighs. “No, I didn’t.” Luckily, the waitress reappears then with Freddie’s meal, and silence lapses between them as they both watch the waitress stroll away. 

He wishes, not for the first time, that his fathers were here. 

“I’m sorry for what I said to you, the other day,” he begins. Freddie raises her eyebrows at him over the rim of her mug.

“I gotta admit, Agent Ford, I didn’t think you were anything special until you pulled that shit,” Freddie scoffs. “Only reason that didn’t end up on my front page is no one would’ve believed me; you’re the toast of the town for taking down Lecter and Graham in one go. Plus I owe you one for getting Crawford out of the picture, too. He’d been sending our offices cease and desist letters for thirty damn years.” She gives her coffee a dirty look. “Waste of paper.”

“And you’re not in the habit of blowing up people’s private lives, right?” he hedges. “Not anymore, you said.”

Her eyes shutter. “Not unless they deserve it. Do you deserve it, Agent Ford?”

“I might,” he says lowly, and her brow furrows, but before she can press, he gives his other confession. “But I know someone else who does, too. I…” he swallows, “I know who the killer is.”

Her brow furrows deeper. “Okay. And why are you telling me, and not your team?”

“It’s not safe.”

Then her forehead smooths with comprehension and she leans back in the booth, considering him, and Holden tries not to fidget under her stare. “The killer knows you know. And he… has something over you?”

He nods. 

“So now you need my help. Why should I give it to you? You don’t exactly like me, and I don’t very much like you.”

He doesn’t want to do it, because there’s a big possibility it’s going to send her running out the door, never to talk to him again, but he can’t think of any other way to convince her. He gestures to her hands, and slips into her mind like slipping on a pair of gloves. 

_ “ _‘_ Out, damned spot,’ _ ” he quotes, and watches as Freddie’s eyes go round. “We all have things that keep us up at night. But sometimes the nightmares leak out into reality, right? Sometimes we see things we know aren’t there. Like… like the blood on our hands.” 

She drops her hands to her lap faster than Holden can blink. Her face, just as he feared, darkens like a storm cloud. “I didn’t do anything worse than they did.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he replies, then winces at how harsh it sounds. “Not to our conscience. Guilt is… an unpredictable thing, at best.” 

At least she hasn’t left yet, or lunged across the table to slap him. “And this thing the killer has over you,” she counters, still clearly wanting to land a blow in return, “is keeping you up at night?”

“I haven’t exactly slept yet,” he huffs humorlessly, “if you couldn’t tell. But it’ll… I won’t be able to rest if I leave this undone.”

He can see the moment the words register, and he tries to ignore the sinking feeling in his chest at her expression. “You’re planning to leave,” she says, softly, disbelieving. “You’re running.”

“I have to,” Holden confides. “If he… this will ruin me. It’ll ruin everything, but I can’t… I can’t let it ruin my partners, too.”

Freddie stares at him for a long moment. Her shoulders are still high at her ears, and Holden knows that if she turns him down, he’s going to need a Plan B, but right now he lets himself go still in the quiet between them. He’s _so_ _tired._ Fuck, he misses his dads. 

But then, Freddie sighs. The fight visibly drains out of her, though she still spares Holden a glower. “Anyone ever tell you you’ve got really good kicked-puppy eyes?” 

Without waiting for a reply, she shoves aside her untouched meal and sets her purse on the table, and starts rummaging through the pockets. Confused, Holden watches her, but before he can ask her what she’s doing she pulls out a slim plastic rectangle, about the length of a pen but a little thicker. Holden’s heart stutters when he realizes what it is.

“Technology just keeps getting smaller, doesn’t it?” Freddie quips. She presses a button on the side of the device, and a gentle whirring clicks to a halt. Holden hadn’t even noticed the sound until it’s gone. 

“You were recording this,” he says, dumbly. And then, he starts to laugh. 

It’s only a chuckle at first, but it builds, bubbling out of him until it’s a proper belly-laugh, definitely more than a little manic and drawing the narrowed eyes of the waitress behind the counter. But once he’s started, he can’t stop, because he knows if he does he might start sobbing. His very first interview on the other side of the table, and  _ he hadn’t even realized. _

“Jesus, I’ll help you if you just _ stop that,” _ Freddie says. “You’re really cracking, aren’t you?”

Holden tries biting his lip to stop the giggles from escaping, but he’s barely successful. “Sorry,” he tells her. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just… sorry. What were you recording for?” 

She’s still staring at him like he’s lost his mind, but she explains. “Well, tell you the truth, after our last encounter I was debating if I really  _ should _ just blow up your life. Like I said, you weren’t very nice to me, and an FBI agent and the Verger heir, canoodling? It’s like sitting on a golden egg, Ford. And, for a minute there, I was glad I’d have physical evidence if you snapped and stabbed me with a butter knife. But,” she says, and between them, she clicks another button, until there’s the telltale grinding of a tape recording over, a wave of white noise rushing in to drown out Holden’s damning words. “There. A show of trust. Plus I have a feeling you might need this more than me.” She pushes the recorder towards him. 

He reaches out a careful hand and curls it around the cool plastic casing as he tries his best to steady his breathing. “Freddie,” he says, “what if I told you you could still get one half of that egg?” 

She’s sharp. “Are you telling me Morgan Verger is the killer?” He must look exhausted enough to be believable, because there’s no incredulity in her voice. 

“I’m not telling you anything, because I can’t. But I  _ can _ point you towards something that no one has thought to look for before.” 

It’s all she needs to hear. She fishes a notepad and pen out of her purse. “What do you need me to do?”

“What D— Will Graham asked of you. An article.”

As she scribbles, he tells her about the pig tongue scene— not about putting it there, of course, but that it exists— and then tells her to start asking questions about Morgan Verger’s dealings in South America, and the coincidentally spiking crime rate surrounding his developments, and to poke a stick at the potentially unbearable weight of his father’s legacy. The exact thing Morgan would hate to read, and especially hate for the public to know. And, because Morgan had seen Freddie and Holden together before, he would know exactly who gave her that information. 

“And then he comes back to the States for Jack Crawford’s funeral, and sees the perfect opportunity to name himself heir to Hannibal Lecter’s vacated throne,” Freddie draws the conclusion herself, just as Holden hopes her readers— and law enforcement— will. “It’s a compelling story, I’ll give you that.”

“I know it’s a tight turn around, but I’d appreciate it if you make it the front page of your next issue. You go to print in two days, right? We don— I don’t have a lot of time,” Holden says. 

“Don’t worry, I’m used to working fast,” Freddie says, crossing her last  _ t _ before she sets down her pen, at last, and peers up at him. “You know that when I publish this, he’s either going to run, or go after you, right? Frederick Chilton caught the bad end of a matchstick for Graham’s article.” 

Holden nods. He knows Morgan won’t run, because he wouldn’t give in that easily, and he knows what Freddie’s implying: Morgan won’t stop until Holden’s dead— either literally, in the completed Cain and Abel tableau, or metaphorically, with Morgan revealing the truth about Holden to the world as he’s shoved into a cop car, or put on trial. Holden’s hoping for option two, but he can’t leave until one or the other happens. He can’t put his fathers at risk by having his homecoming haunted by a bloodthirsty ex. 

And, even though option two will hurt Bill and Wendy and the work of the BSU, at least they’ll be alive. Holden can’t protect them if— when— he’s dead. 

“It has to happen,” he finally says, with a resigned shrug. 

“Bullshit,” Freddie retorts. Shocked, Holden blinks. 

“That’s bullshit,” Freddie repeats with a roll of her eyes when she sees his face. “Look, I have had to sit here and listen while you’ve told me all about myself, so now it’s your turn. You said it yourself— you’re in Graham’s shoes, yeah, but you’re right: you’re not him. You don’t have Hannibal Lecter waiting in a big glass house to help you when shit goes sideways,” she says. “You’re thinking yourself the martyr, right? That you have to do all this by yourself, because it’s what you deserve, after you’ve fucked up? Well, I’m calling bullshit.” 

“You were right,” she continues, “Congratulations, you got me pegged: it’s been thirty-fuckin-three years and I’ve got my big long list of regrets and my bloody fucking hands. Everyone who was a part of that shitshow does. But I’m _ alive. _ I fought to  _ stay _ alive. And it’s bullshit that you’re just giving up like this when you have something I didn’t.” He knows what she’s going to say before the words leave her mouth, but it’s still a suckerpunch to the stomach, knocking the air out of him for a second time. “People who will fight in your corner, as long as you don’t chase them out of it.” 

She taps a fingernail to her notepad, forcefully enough it leaves a tiny crescent moon in the paper. “I can help you, but I’m not a cop, Ford. I’ll write this, but you have to promise me that you’re going to talk to your partners, too. They’ll thank you even as they’re cursing your name that at least they’re not blindsided by this over your dead body.” 

She stares at Holden until he nods. Then, satisfied, she snaps shut the cover of her notepad and shoves it back in her purse. “Well, seeing as I’m doing all this research for you, I better get to work,” she quips, but there’s no real heat in it. She stands and pulls on her jacket, freeing her curls from the collar to bounce over her shoulders. 

Before she leaves, though, she looks back at Holden, studying him with those sharp, glass-blue eyes. After a long moment, she finally says, “Why do I feel like you could give me the interview of my career?” 

Holden offers a small smile. “Because I probably could.”

“You owe me for this, you know. Sponging my guilt or no.” 

“Tell you what,” he says. “I survive this, then one day, when we’re both ready, that interview is yours.”

“Exclusive rights?”

He inclines his head. “Exclusive rights.” 

She smirks, and then she’s gone in a whirl of red. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> freddie my girl
> 
> your comments and kudos have been an absolute DELIGHT !!! but y'all better buckle up, it's about to get wild :)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more driving. pretend he’s listening to evermore

And now, like Bill said, all those lifetimes ago: time for the waiting game. 

Holden drives around for a while. He doesn’t want to go any place familiar— nowhere Morgan could find him. He drives past the BSHCI, but Alana’s car isn’t in the parking lot. He drives past Tėtis’ old house, even, but the time hasn’t come for him to go inside. He thinks about finding a library and almost turns back around to D.C. before he decides against it. Half the comfort of a library was knowing his fathers would eventually come to find him there, sweep him into their arms and take him home. That wouldn’t happen this time. 

He drives back to Virginia and circles his apartment block a few times, scanning for signs of Morgan maybe coming back early to finish the job he’d started at the Estate. Though he’s pretty sure Morgan doesn’t have his address, he fully believes the man could find a way to get it. But Holden doesn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, though a girl walking her dog gives him the stink-eye on his third loop. 

He tries to make himself relax into the repetitive motions of driving. While he and Bill would trade spots every now and then during road school, Bill was usually content to drive most the time, leaving Holden with hours to stare at the passing small-town scenery with nothing but his thoughts to distract him, and it’s been a while since Holden’s had this long behind the wheel. He’s grateful for the task to preoccupy his mind.

Because he’s not a complete asshole, he refills Wendy’s tank, and then, when the sun is finally dipping behind the trees, he heads back to Quantico. The BSU wing is silent and cordoned off with yellow tape when Holden gets there, but he just ducks under it and steps inside, and is completely unsurprised to find Wendy at her desk, having done the same. 

She jumps a little, when she notices him, and then she does the least-Wendy thing Holden has ever seen: she puts her head in her hands. Her fingers slide through her usually perfect hair, mussing it and shattering the manicured composure Holden has always associated with her, and she sighs, deep enough Holden can feel the weight of it in his own lungs. It’s all only for the briefest of moments before she’s glaring up at him, but it still has him reeling. 

“Holden,” she says slowly, enunciating each word like she’s talking to a child, “I’ve tried my best to be compassionate during this little crisis of yours, but when there’s a killer on the loose who may or may not be looking for you, maybe you shouldn’t  _ disappear _ from an  _ active crime scene." _

Holden flinches. She notices, but she’s not done reprimanding him. “I’m assuming you’ve returned my car in one piece?” she asks. “I had to talk Bill out of hijacking an emergency response frequency to listen for accidents or abandoned vehicles, but even I was about to start calling up hospitals.” 

Holden should feel ashamed, but instead, there’s a tiny flicker of something like hope stirring in his chest. They had been worried about him. _ Bill _ had been worried, after everything. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, as sincerely as he can, and Wendy must hear something in his voice because she stands up from her chair, and that little crease of consternation appears between her eyebrows. 

“Holden?” she asks, “Are you alright?”

He’ll never live it down if he starts crying, but fuck, his eyes are itching. “I’m sorry, Wendy,” he says, his voice embarrassingly small, enough to make him want to run and hide— but he promised Freddie. “I’m sorry. I fucked up.” 

Wendy looks bewildered. She takes a step towards him, but he instinctively steps back, like a pathetic frightened animal, and it doesn’t help when his shoulder jostles against her office doorway and he has to swallow a whimper. Wendy freezes. Her eyes sweep over him like she’s checking for injuries, and he thanks God he had the foresight to button up his collar high to hide the swelling ring Morgan had left. Still, she registers the absence of his silver tie— how could she not— but she doesn’t comment. Her eyes say it for her.

“What do you mean?” she asks, but Holden shakes his head.

“I can’t— I can’t explain everything. But I…” He closes his eyes against the tidal grief. “I got in over my head, and I— I could’ve… I… I jeopardized everything we’ve worked for.”

He doesn’t know how to apologize for something he can’t vocalize: he can’t tell her about the true extent of Morgan’s and his relationship, about how completely he had misread everything. He’d been blinded by the illusion of freedom, when he should’ve known there was no freedom in what Morgan was offering. Morgan hadn’t wanted a partnership. He wanted  _ control, _ because he had none of his own. He wanted Holden’s  _ submission. _

And Holden had almost given it to him. 

He’s sure Wendy must think he’s insane, but just as he’s about to apologize again and run off with his tail between his legs, Freddie be damned, she speaks.

“I know it can be... scary, to learn these things about yourself,” she says carefully, and Holden blinks, bemused.  _ What? _ “Especially when you’ve lived your life expecting something else of yourself. But you don’t… you don’t need to be ashamed of who you are, Holden. It’s not a crime to listen to your heart over your head sometimes, and… we’ve all gone a little rose-colored glasses, once or twice, when we meet someone. It’s, it’s called being a human. And,” she looks down at her fingers as they brush the edge of a stray paper on her desk, but rather than straightening it, she makes it more crooked. “Our hearts choose who they choose.”

Oh. 

_ Oh. _

When she said  _ crisis, _ she meant she thinks he’s having a crisis about his  _ sexuality. _

It’s so unexpected— and _absurd,_ since his parents are _two men_ — that he almost laughs. He can feel it threatening to balloon out of him, just like it had in front of Freddie, but he bites down on his tongue so hard he can taste copper and tries to keep his face blank. Hey, if anything, he should be grateful: Wendy is being incredibly kind and open-minded, where many haven’t been.

His heart melts a little. 

“I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but Holden, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe in you. Not just your work, but  _ you _ . No one else is pigheaded enough to make all this,” Wendy gestures to the office around them, “out of chaos.” Then it’s her turn to cringe, her eyes flicking to the now-empty desk behind him, the severed tongue swept off for analysis. “Maybe pigheaded was the wrong choice of words.”

A small laugh escapes him then, even though it comes out a little ragged. “No, it’s accurate.” 

She offers him that little half-smile of hers, but only briefly, before her gaze goes sympathetic, flicking back to his tie-less collar. “I’m guessing your relationship with Morgan is over?” she asks, and Holden hesitates only a second before he nods. She mirrors him. “Well, whatever you need, we’ll have your back. Maybe this was even the goal of our unsub, to separate you two, but we’ll roll with every punch as it comes.” Her eyes shift over his shoulder again, only this time they stay and focus. “But now it’s up to you to face what you’re avoiding.”

He can feel the presence at his back even before he sees him, the shift in the displaced air, the prickle of eyes on the nape of his neck— but still he turns, and there is Bill, standing in the middle of the room and looking, well. A little lost. Not unlike Holden.

“Hey,” Bill says when he meets his eyes, though his voice breaks mid-word and he coughs to clear his throat. 

“Hey,” Holden echoes. He glances back at Wendy, to see her smiling; she makes a little shooing motion so he steps out of her office, and she closes the door behind him to grant them privacy. He faces Bill again, but he’s not sure what to say. It’s clear Bill isn’t either. 

And then Holden’s stomach growls. 

It diffuses the tension like cutting the right wire on a time-bomb, and Bill cracks a smile that Holden can’t help returning. “Would you— are you hungry?” Holden asks. “To be totally honest, I have no idea what time it is right now, but I haven’t eaten today and I’m starving.” He really is— he didn’t think he would be ever again, with how tied up in knots his stomach has been, but it seems all those knots are finally unraveling.

Bill nods. “I could eat. But you’re buying, after the stunt you pulled today.” It’s an admonishment, but it’s more bark than bite, so Holden consents with a smile.

“Yeah, alright.”

There’s a diner down the street they’ve gone to a few times. It’s a popular lunch spot for Quantico folks so it’s nearly always deserted in the evening, after working hours end and everyone’s gone home to real, non-deep-fried food. It’s an old mom-and-pop place, and Holden has wondered in the past if his dad had eaten here too, a lifetime ago, after lectures or consults and before the long drive back to Wolf Trap. In the days before Hannibal Lecter started cooking for him, of course. 

The smell of fried food hits them like a truck as they enter, and although it’s no equivalent to Tėtis’ cooking, Holden’s mouth starts watering as he realizes he really is ravenous. They get a booth, and Bill orders patty melt, because Holden well knows Bill’s idea of comfort food after a hard day is something more grease than meat, but Holden orders the least-dodgy sounding steak on the menu; cooked rare, he tells the waiter,  _ very _ rare, even though it earns him a wrinkled nose of disgust from Bill. Holden would have ordered it as bloody as physically possible if he didn’t have company. There’s a craving sitting deep in his stomach that he’s suddenly anxious to satisfy. 

“You can have my fries,” he tells Bill, earning an eye-roll. 

The awkwardness descends again once the waiter leaves them alone, and Holden tries to think of how to start this conversation. He doesn’t think Bill’s going to steer it the gay-panic direction like Wendy did, due to his earlier evident discomfort with the topic, but he’s not positive. Before, Holden had scripted out every single word necessary to make the FBI think Morgan was just caught in the fray like Holden had been, but now he finds himself trying to extract himself from Morgan, when before they’d been a shared breath— without a single idea how to do so.

If he’s going to do this, if he’s going to try to stick around after he’s turned that sunlight against Morgan and pinned him under it until it’s burnt him to a crisp, he needs to reveal just enough that he doesn’t get singed, too. And then, maybe, he can go back to the comforting embrace of his shadows. 

Bill speaks before he can, though. “So. Verger.”

_ Here goes. _ “Verger,” Holden parrots. 

“He wasn’t too happy about us being at the farm today.”

“I can’t imagine he was,” Holden huffs drily. “Did you— did you find anything?”

“We found the pig— the one missing its tongue— but no evidence of who cut it out. Fingerprints and footprints aren’t helping the bast— I mean, uh, Verger, though. Only ones in there belong to his family and the farmhand. And your— your boy’s alibi is flimsy as a wet sock.” 

“He’s not,” Holden interjects. 

“What?”

They both pause as the waiter drops off their drinks and bustles off again. Holden had just ordered water, but now he’s wishing the diner served something stronger. 

“He’s not, ah, my anything,” Holden continues, clumsily. “We— it didn’t work out.” 

Bill flushes red, as uncomfortable as Holden. “I’m, uh. Sorry to hear that.” Holden wonders if Wendy got to Bill first with a talking-to.

“Don’t be,” Holden says quickly, and Bill’s brow raises. “He turned out to be… not what I expected.” He sucks in a breath, ready to explain his meeting with Freddie, what storm is looming at the horizon, but Bill cuts him off once more. 

His voice is gruff and he won’t quite meet Holden’s eyes, but there’s at least a trace of sincerity in his words. “Look, Holden, before you go on— I owe you an apology. No, let me,” he grumbles, as Holden makes a noise of protest, “I made assumptions, and I let my own… prejudices get in the way of our investigation, of our  _ partnership, _ and I accused you of things you weren’t guilty of.” 

Holden’s more than a little relieved that Bill is letting them direct this to the murder investigation, rather than Holden’s love life, even if the line between the two is a little blurry this time around. “It’s okay, Bill. I didn’t exactly give you a reason to trust me.”

“You’re not particularly good at keeping secrets, so I guess it threw me for a loop when all of a sudden you had something to hide.”

The waiter returns with their food. Bill digs in, but Holden just stares down at his steak and the watery red juice oozing into the dips of the plate. 

“I’m tired of hiding,” he says, truthfully. Wendy’s words echo:  _ You don’t have to be ashamed of who you are. _ But Holden isn’t ashamed, he just… wants to be worthy of his legacy. 

Can he still be worthy if he’s on the run? If he leaves now, in the wake of shoving Morgan off his cliff, can he still be who he has always wanted to be? How many years will he have to live in hiding, here, versus out there? Is he as patient as his fathers? 

He was so quick to jump at the crook of Morgan’s finger, at the promise of knowing that his waiting is almost up, that he’s finally about to hit the water and see everything waiting for him underneath the waves. But Holden doesn’t want to run anymore.

He wants to see.

“I don’t think Morgan is who he says he is,” he tells Bill. “He’s hiding something, too.” 

Bill sets down his fork. “What do you mean?” Holden doesn’t have to rely on his imagination to see Bill is eager to be convinced of Morgan’s villainy. Hell, he’s already convinced of it, he just wants Holden to tell him he was right. “Do you think he has something to do with the case?” 

_ See? _ “That, but something… more.” Holden picks at his paper napkin. The ends shred under his nails, the ones that still look too red. “If he is responsible… this wasn’t his first time. The scenes were way too advanced to be the work of a rookie.”

“Jesus, Holden, what have you gotten yourself into?” Bill mutters. “You do hear yourself, right? You’re accusing the _ Verger heir _ of being a  _ serial killer. _ No jury’s gonna go for that; it’s never gonna see the inside of a courtroom. Hell, Shepard himself might finally hog-tie you up and toss you out on the curb if you go to him with that.” 

“I know it sounds insane, but— you have to admit, I’ve had some insane theories in the past that have turned up true.” He lets his desperation bleed through into his voice. Freddie had told him he had good puppy-dog eyes; he gives them to Bill now, who relents with a sigh.

“Alright. Talk me through it. You know we don’t have anything tying him to the Gardener twins, or the cemetery John Doe.”

“But I think we were right, with  _ Christus: _ he was trying to get our attention. The Gardener twins went missing the _ same day _ Morgan arrived in Baltimore. He could’ve seen them at the airport, followed them, not wasting any time.”

“Even if we could prove Verger’s whereabouts, that’s circumstantial at best.”

“But then  _ he showed up at the Bureau,  _ Bill. These killers  _ love  _ showing up at the scene to see how they’ve fooled us all.” Bill’s shaking his head, but Holden’s pressing on. “The next day, he desecrates Jack Crawford’s grave, because I told him I didn’t like the guy. Then we’re at the bar, and we leave in separate cabs. He could’ve circled back.”

“And the tongue? That’s a pretty bold move. And you said yourself that it felt like a threat when the others weren’t.”

“Maybe he was trying to throw us off his trail. Maybe…” Holden swallows, “maybe that’s when he changed his mind. Deciding I wasn’t… wasn’t what he thought.”

Bill narrows his eyes. “What makes you so special? Why’d he pick you, out of everyone in that room?”

Holden thinks back to Alana beside him on her couch, looking at him but not really seeing _him—_ instead seeing her son, down to the very tie. Here, Alana’s words leave his tongue, flaying open his and Morgan’s mirrored truths, the image warping on the glass between them. “Maybe he was looking for himself. Maybe he saw me and saw… an opportunity. For release. Catharsis. He’s been living in his father’s shadow for his entire life, and then he meets me, and thinks this is his chance to make his own name by doing what his father couldn’t: fool the FBI.”

Bill grunts. “Well at least we can confirm he’s got poor judgement. Who could confuse you for a psychopath in hiding?”

Holden gives a lopsided smile. “Right?”

He’s met with another sigh. Maybe Bill needs a good night’s sleep even more than he does. “Holden,” he says, “This won’t stick. Regardless of the evidence we _ don’t have, _ and the fact that he’s a  _ Verger, _ the only way we can make an arrest is if we catch him red-fucking-handed. Do you have a plan for  _ that?” _ It’s a rhetorical question, Bill plainly doubtful, but Holden’s ready. He sucks in a breath.

“I actually might.” Bill waits for him to continue, and Holden offers a guilty attempt at a smile. “I met with Freddie Lounds.”

_ “Holden,” _ Bill hisses. 

“I know, I know, but— I trust her. She’s going to publish an article about Morgan. A front page feature on the most popular crime tabloid in journalism, and with such a high-profile family in focus, it’s gonna be snapped up by the media in a heartbeat,” he insists. “We’ll let the press be our jury.”

“You’re pulling a Dolarhyde,” Bill says incredulously. “Who’s your sacrifice? Your Chilton?” 

_ Moment of truth.  _ “Me,” Holden admits, and Bill’s eyes go wide. “But it’s not— it’s not a sacrifice, not really. Maybe it started as one, but—”  _ but I don’t know if I’m Cain or if I’m Abel, anymore.  _ “Not anymore. Morgan… told me things. I’m just passing them along.”

After this revelation, quiet lapses grease-thick between them. Holden looks down at his food, suddenly remembering it’s there, but he’s lost his appetite now. Or, rather, he knows this poor substitute won’t satisfy it. It isn’t real blood. 

“Holden—” Bill starts, hesitating, and Holden braces himself. “Do you really think it’s Morgan, or do you— do you just want it to be him? This isn’t, like, some kind of fucked-up,” he looks a little green around the next words that leave his mouth, “Lovers’ quarrel, is it?”

A bitter smile twitches at Holden’s mouth, and he doesn’t try to suppress it. “If you’re asking if we’re the new Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, that’s gonna be a resounding no.” 

“You… you had us going for a minute there, though. You were pretty quick to defend him.”

Holden sighs. “I’m sorry for that. I think I just liked being  _ wanted.” _ He’s been so unsure of his every step, so when he was promised steady ground… he took it, without making sure it wasn’t quicksand.

“You are,” he hears, and he glances over sharply, but Bill is avoiding his stare, instead looking down at his abandoned food, too. 

“What?”

“Wanted. You are. We— we want you, here. This is where you’re supposed to be.”

It’s a lesson ingrained in him since birth: every home is temporary. Bill and Wendy only love the version of him that is palatable. _If they knew the truth,_ that little voice croons, albeit sympathetically, _if they knew_ _the_ real _truth, they’d take that love back._

_ But, _ Holden whispers back,  _ can’t it still be mine in the meantime? _

Bill seems to have hit his touchy-feely quota for the day, because he clears his throat loudly and sets his jaw, settling back in the booth and giving Holden that look of his, the way he always looks at Holden when Holden has a crazy idea, the way he did just a few days ago before the world went to hell. 

“Okay. We’re fucked, but okay. How do we make sure Morgan doesn’t snap your neck before Freddie’s article comes out? How do we make sure he doesn’t snap your neck  _ after _ Freddie’s article comes out?”

Before Freddie had ordered him to ask for his partners’ help, Holden had been planning on sticking his head in the sand and hoping Morgan would just… leave him be, which of course he knows was a terrible plan. 

“We throw him off the scent. We bring him in for questioning,” he says now. “We play his own game, and we fool _ him.” _

Bill rubs his jaw pensively. “We make him think he got away with it.”

“He’ll let his guard down, and that’s when we strike.”

“And what? We just hope he snaps? He could just call us crazy and bring the BSU down around our ears.”

“Not if we get Alana first.”

Bill’s eyebrows skyrocket up his forehead.  _ “Alana?” _

“She’s… she’s my therapist. Kind of.”

There’s no more room for Bill’s eyebrows to ascend, but they certainly make an effort. “Jesus Christ, kid, you really know how to pick ‘em, don’t you?”

Holden chuckles weakly. “The good news is the ‘kind of.’ We never signed any contract or agreed to doctor/patient confidentiality, so anything she’s told me is fair game.”

“So is anything you’ve told her.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not an idiot, Bill. I didn’t tell her anything I wouldn’t tell you. But,” he veers quickly away from  _ that _ subject, “if we really want the nail in Morgan Verger’s coffin, we need to get to his mother.” 

So he tells Bill his idea, the one that’s been forming and solidifying since Freddie had left the diner. As he talks, he watches Bill’s expression transform from disbelief to contemplation, but he keeps his own controlled. He’s not sure it’s going to work, but on his drive back to Quantico, he’d thought to himself: how would they catch  _ him, _ one day? What’s his weakness? 

“Alright,” Bill says when Holden finishes. “It’s bat-shit insane, but most of your ideas are. We’ll go run this with Wendy and see what she says. But first, I’m finishing my meal. And, look,” he chuckles darkly, “We talked business. You can write this one off as a business expense.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is mostly just people going to diners and not eating the food they order
> 
> ok ok i'm not gonna lie, this fic definitely started with some ~bill/holden~ endgame vibes lol, but i decided to take it a turn towards more bill’s repressed emotions/internalized homophobia. Because holden really deserves his happily ever after with someone who will accept him in his entirety, without asterisks or reservations~
> 
> in the meantime he'd settle for a hug


	13. Chapter 13

Holden has, essentially, been an actor his entire adult life. The same cannot be said for Bill Tench. 

“You still look constipated,” Wendy tells Bill for the fifth time, through a mirth she’s not even bothering to hide. “Why do you look so constipated?”

“You’re usually more _frowny._ Come on, Bill, being displeased with me is literally your default setting,” Holden joins in with a grin of his own, making Wendy laugh into her palm. “This should be easy.”

Bill, who is currently contorting his face into an expression resembling a Halloween Nixon mask, gives up and throws his hands in the air, scowling at them both. “I _am_ displeased with you. I just— I can’t fucking turn it on and off like a light switch.”

They’re in the BSU— no, correction: they _haven’t left_ the BSU since the night before, when Bill and Holden had returned from the diner and filled Wendy in on their game plan. They’d all agreed they shouldn’t go home until Morgan was under lock and key, or at least assigned a tail, so the three of them had shoved their desks together in the center of the room in a facsimile of the time Jack Crawford had joined their forces, and spent the rest of the night huddled in the dim glow of the office lamps, mapping out their every upcoming step. There wasn’t any room for error in the days ahead.

They’d parted briefly when the early-morning janitor had come clattering in, to shower in the facility locker rooms and change into fresh clothes— every smart FBI agent had at least one spare outfit in their office, on the chance a case goes awry or, like them, you have to pull an all-nighter. After a round of rock paper scissors, Bill was sent as their sacrifice to get proper coffee, since none of them could stomach another cup of the break room’s sludge. He’d returned unharmed from the daylight, and now here they are, rehearsing for their upcoming performance against the master charlatan himself, Morgan Verger. 

Morgan Verger, who is being brought in for questioning that afternoon. Holden, obviously, is not allowed into the session, or even just to watch, so it’ll be up to Wendy and Bill to convince Morgan that they think he’s innocent. So innocent, in fact, that he’s not even a target of their hypothetical killer, so he won’t have any police detail breathing down his neck. 

Bill, as they’re seeing, is having a little bit of trouble with the assignment. Wendy, on the other hand, is remarkably good at pretending. Holden tells her as much, and earns an arched brow for his troubles.

“I’m a woman in a man's profession, Holden. I didn’t get here without faking quite a few things,” she says wryly, and Holden covers his splutter into his coffee with a cough. 

Bill sighs. “This is useless. The guy has met me, like, once. He’s not going to be able to tell if my frown isn’t as ‘frowny’ as usual.”

Wendy rolls her eyes, but assents. “You’re right, we’ll be fine. You, however,” she directs to Holden. “You gonna be able to keep it together?”

Holden’s role is a little bit more… physical, since he can’t get within earshot of Morgan above ground. They’re already on thin ice with Shepard; the man had agreed to bring Verger in for questioning, but had made it painfully clear that any “funny business” from Holden would have him off the case so fast his head would spin, if not roll.

He gives Wendy his best reassuring smile. “Don’t worry about me. My parents read me a lot of Shakespeare.”

“Alright, Romeo.” She casts a glance at her watch. “Time to head up.” 

Bill grabs his jacket off a nearby desk, where it had been sprawled next to their tape recorder. They haven’t had an interview session for weeks now; there’s a thin layer of dust on the device that has Holden’s stomach swooping. Bill seems to share the sentiment, as he kicks the desk leg as he shoves into his sleeves. “Feels weird to be interviewing a killer and not have that thing going.”

“Soon enough,” Holden tells him, but even now, he knows he’ll probably never sit at a metal table across from Morgan Verger. However this story ends, when its door clangs shut, it’ll be final, regardless of who is on which side of the bars. 

Wendy and Bill go up alone. They have a briefing with Shepard beforehand, and Morgan’s not due for another hour, so Holden waits below in the empty BSU. If anyone else were around, usually he’d be all nervous energy, jittery legs pacing a hole in the floor, but since there’s no one to see him, he lets himself go quiet. Still. He sits at his desk and stares at the whiteboard shrine, the altar of Morgan’s misdeeds, and waits.

Five minutes to the hour, he rides the elevator up to the main floor. 

The interview is being held in the same room his dad had been questioned a few weeks before, and luckily Quantico is still in enough of a tizzy that no one really glances twice at Holden as he makes his way through the bullpen. He reaches an intern’s desk a few paces away just as Wendy and Bill round the corner with Morgan.

Holden’s internal quiet implodes. He doesn’t have to fake the wave of anxiety that wracks through him at the sight of Morgan, or the stumble backwards that has Holden hip-checking the intern’s desk. It works in his favor, though, as the intern’s pencil cup goes flying, utensils clattering to the tile, and three heads turn his way at once as the intern yelps in dismay. 

Morgan had looked tense as he’d walked in, the furrow at his brow— so like Holden’s own— giving away his trepidation that he’s being led into a trap; but when he spots Holden, his expression darkens as fast as he’d switched off those lights in the Estate parlor. Only there are no stars to fade in now.

Bill and Wendy follow the script as planned, unaware of Holden’s legs turning to lead.

Wendy’s hand takes Morgan’s arm, and she murmurs something to him as she sends a glower Holden’s way. Bill, still vaguely Nixon-y, is louder: “Beat it, Ford,” he orders, like a B-movie cop, but Holden’s eyes are still locked on Morgan, whose ire is rapidly morphing into surprise at the agents’ hostility— unaware they’re putting on a show to convince him that Holden’s on the outs of his own team, and that he’s still on Morgan’s side because of it.

The disgruntled intern’s shoulder brushes Holden’s and it’s like knocking a planet out of orbit. Holden scrambles to crouch down and help the intern gather the scattered pens, apologizing weakly, the blood still rushing in his ears. 

When he rises again, the door to the interview room is closed. 

Holden goes numbly back to the BSU, but he doesn’t make it far; as soon as he steps out of the elevator into the basement, his legs finally give out on him, and he crumples down the wall to the cold floor. 

He hadn’t expected it to hit him this hard. But seeing Morgan there, solid and real and livid, had suddenly thrown Holden back to the Estate, Morgan’s hand at his throat, only slightly less painful than the crush of what could only be— Holden sees now— heartbreak. And now that devastation is new all over again.

His lungs feel tight. He’s still not wearing a tie, but his collar still constricts like a noose around his neck and he fumbles to undo the too-high buttons, sucking in the thin air of the musty lower level as deeply as he can, forcing himself to concentrate. Tėtis’ soothing voice drifts through his head, trailing scraps of advice from meditations long past, but he can’t snag onto a single clear word.

He shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes until he sees sparks, and he lets time slip. 

Reality snaps back with a ding. 

Holden jerks, but the hallway is still empty, and he wonders if he’s hallucinating until the ding is followed by a low mechanical grind. 

It’s the elevator.

A glance at his watch tells him thirty minutes have passed in a heartbeat, which means the session upstairs is over, and there’s only one person it could be on that elevator, since Bill and Wendy were to report to Shepard before coming back to the BSU. Holden scrambles to his feet just as the doors slide open.

Morgan doesn’t look remotely surprised to find him there. In fact, he smiles.

“Hi,” Morgan says, sunnily. 

Holden’s insides go slimy. 

Morgan takes a step towards him, then another. He flicks a casual glance down the hall, but they’re all by themselves down here. Holden clenches his fists so they don’t tremble.

He has a script, too. He just has to get his tongue working. 

“Morgan,” he greets. His voice cracks. Morgan’s smile broadens, and then he’s lunging.

But instead of a hand closing around Holden’s throat or an ankle knife sheathing in his gut or any other of the dozen brutal images that flash through his head, Morgan’s hand grips his bicep, and Holden finds himself being tugged through the nearest door— which just so happens to open into a supply closet.

They’re plunged into darkness as Morgan slams the door shut behind him, and over his racing pulse Holden can barely hear the other man feel along the wall for a moment until his fingers find the light switch, and then the tiny space floods with light. 

It makes Holden’s vision go spotty and red. He blinks to clear it, and between one blink and the next Morgan is crowding in close again, pressing the hard line of his body up along Holden’s. Holden backs up immediately, but his shoulders hit a shelf behind him, and he’s cornered as Morgan drops his head to Holden’s neck and mouths at the junction of his jaw, like no time at all has passed between their tryst in the alley and right now.

“I’m sorry,” Morgan murmurs, voice honeyed, into Holden’s skin. Instinctively, Holden goes stiff as a corpse, bracing for— for _violence,_ of some kind, but when nothing comes he begs the jackrabbit pace of his heart to slow, especially with Morgan’s teeth so close to his jugular. “You were right, they didn’t find anything. They think I’m innocent.” Holden can _feel_ the other man’s smile. “They’re all so _blind.”_

Holden’s throat is desert-dry, but fortunately, Morgan doesn’t seem to notice. He prattles on, his hands rucking up Holden’s shirt and sliding up underneath, a shock of hot skin against Holden’s goosebumps.

His collar is still undone, and even in the dim lighting, the bruises at Holden’s neck that had swelled and purpled overnight are obviously visible, and don’t escape Morgan’s notice. The man hums, and Holden can feel it reverberate through his collarbone. 

“I didn’t hurt you too bad, did I?” Morgan’s nose drags along his Adam's apple, breath rustling the fabric of Holden’s collar. “Think I left a pretty little necklace, didn’t I? I bet you liked it, even.” 

This is it. The entire plan could crumble if Holden doesn’t get his act together in the next two seconds. He’s never played the deliberate honeypot before, _but,_ that faithful little voice encourages, _it’s really no different than any other interview with any other psychopath._ It’s just as much body language as it is words. Let them think you see them, and they’ll give you everything you want. 

He wills his rigid limbs to relax, forces his hands to raise and twist in Morgan’s shirt like they had that night, eons ago. He exhales in a long hiss, until his pulse beats steady and unbroken in his veins.

Holden pulls Morgan’s mask on over his own. 

“You yelled at me,” Holden accuses, softly. Morgan hums again. Holden tightens his grip in Morgan’s shirtfront. “You _doubted_ me.”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry, baby.” Morgan’s lips carve a blazing trail across his throat. Holden fights not to close his eyes.

“Why would I ever betray us?” Holden asks. “Now that we’ve found each other, how could you think I’d let that go? For _them?”_ Bill and Wendy’s act really must have worked perfectly: Morgan thinks their unit is fractured, that Holden doesn’t trust his partners enough to value them above Morgan.

Morgan pulls back to bring his mouth to Holden’s, so the next words are breathed against Holden’s lips. “I was wrong, I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you. Let’s go out tonight.” He smiles, teeth glinting in the low light, his eyes dark and so close they blur as Holden stares back. “We can play.” 

God, how did he ever think this man was meant for him? Morgan is _careless._ He’s chasing a thrill, just like Brudos, like Speck, like all the other killers Holden has interviewed and found wanting and dismissed. There’s no _art,_ no _love._ Just a junkie’s addiction to the high.

“I can’t tonight,” Holden says, twisting a button between his fingers, “but how about tomorrow?” He knows what he’s supposed to say: let’s go back to the church, where it all began, it’ll be so romantic. But he meets Morgan’s eyes and sees… nothing. No recognition, no sameness. They’re a blur of adrenaline, of craving, and he’s all but eating out of Holden’s palm.

And that’s when the thought occurs to him, as sudden as lightning splicing the night: _all_ the crime scenes had been threats, hadn’t they? They’d never been tributes, or promises— if they were promises, they were for things Holden never would’ve wanted: promises to be remade in someone else’s image, to wear someone else’s skin like an ill-fitting suit. Because what does the sun do but consume? Burn? There is no life in a direct, eternal blaze. 

Judgment is dawning, and Holden is suspended between damnation and redemption, but he can see. Morgan has blinded _himself._

And that fear that had been gnawing at Holden’s stomach suddenly… dissipates. As if it had never been there at all. A parasite, identified and extracted. 

And so Holden goes off-script. 

“How about dinner? You could— you could come to my place. I’ll cook for you.” Holden smiles. He fucking _bats his eyelashes_ , like a girl at her middle-school crush. “I’m a really good cook. 

Meals are more sacred than death. Holden has no intention of sharing another one with Morgan, but he needs to gain control of the playing field. He’s spent this whole time on Verger territory, or the no man’s land of Quantico, that now it’s time to bring it home.

Morgan licks his lips, falling for it hook, line, and sinker. “Don’t you want to play?” he whines, petulant, but he’s Holden’s now. 

“After,” Holden promises. And then, even though the very thought of it makes his stomach churn, Holden closes the millimeter of distance between them and kisses him. 

Morgan’s mouth parts immediately, his tongue darting out to tease at the seam of Holden’s lips, and Holden lets him in. Feels Morgan’s tongue slick across Holden’s teeth, and his hands slither deeper under Holden’s shirt, pressing fiery against Holden’s stomach then dragging up to his ribs, where his fingers curl in, just slightly, to dig into the flesh. 

Holden pushes him away as firmly as he dares, Morgan’s tongue slipping from his mouth and his hands falling away from his torso. “I have to go back to work,” Holden murmurs in apologetic explanation. “Do you have a pen?” 

Although displeased, Morgan fishes one out of his pocket and hands it over, and it’s Holden’s turn to take the other man’s wrist. He pushes back the cuff of Morgan’s sleeve a little, to reveal the pale red scratches Holden’s frantic nails had torn across the epidermis, but he doesn’t falter as he drags the ink over the other man’s skin. He writes his address as clearly as he can, letting the nub of the pen bite just a little. “There. Tomorrow, eight o’clock. Bring wine, and don’t be late. It’s rude.”

Morgan grins his feline grin, satisfied, like the cat that got the canary, and steals one more kiss before he’s ducking out of the closet and leaving Holden alone. 

As soon as he’s gone, Holden shudders. Fuck, now he feels like he needs another shower.

He waits in the tiny space until he hears the growl of the elevator ascending through the walls, then counts to a hundred for good measure. Shoving his shirt back into his waistband and trying in vain to smooth out the wrinkles, he does up the buttons at his neck and presses his ear to the wood of the door, listening for footsteps. Hearing none, he opens the door and slinks out, spinning to switch off the light as he goes, before turning back in the direction of the BSU and— bumping directly into someone’s chest. _Shit._

Holden stumbles back, already stammering an apology, hoping whoever it is doesn’t realize the room he’s just exited was a fucking supply closet, but the words die in his mouth as he blinks up at the person he just collided with, and then Holden’s wishing he could drop dead, too. 

Shepard stares back at him. At least he looks equally mortified as he takes in Holden’s appearance, and Holden knows what a sight he must be: lips red and kiss-swollen, shirt haphazardly straightened. Shepard’s eyes flick over to the elevator, which he’d probably just seen Morgan disappear into, and then to the closet beside them. 

Holden begs the ground to swallow him up, but the tile remains stubbornly intact. 

Shepard clears his throat. “Agent Ford,” he says stiffly. “I was just coming to find you. Someone left a message for you.”

“A message, sir?” Holden asks. Who is leaving messages for Holden with Shepard? _Unless—_

“Dr. Bloom requests you call her at your earliest convenience,” Shepard replies. He looks like he’s about to say something else, but then he looks at the supply closet again, goes a little pale, and leaves without another word. Honestly, if Holden weren’t so embarrassed, he’d laugh. Instead, he hurries back to the BSU as fast as he can without full-on sprinting. 

Wendy and Bill are already there, likely having arrived while Holden was… _preoccupied_ with Morgan, and their heads snap up when he whirls into the office, papers fluttering in his wake, but he just flaps his hand at them as he scurries for the phone and dials the BSHCI. 

He gets Alana’s secretary, who tells him Alana just left for the evening, but that she’d like to schedule a next meeting with Holden, as soon as possible. “Does tomorrow work?” he asks, as Wendy and Bill join him at the desk, and the secretary pencils him in. 

When he hangs up, all the air leaves him in a rush, and he collapses into his desk chair. He can feel Wendy and Bill’s eyes on him, waiting for an explanation, but Holden’s… God, he’s _tired._ When this is all over, he hopes he’ll be alive just so he can take the longest nap in the history of the universe. 

“So?” Wendy asks. Holden scrubs a hand down his face. 

“It worked.”

“He fell for it?” 

“Every word,” Holden says, and gives a smile that’s more just baring his teeth. “We’re meeting at the church tomorrow night.” 

“And we’ll have the whole fucking cavalry waiting for him,” Bill crows.

Smiling faintly, Wendy leans against his desk and crosses her arms. “And Alana?”

Holden gestures to the phone. “She called before I could. We have a meeting at noon.” All the pieces are snapping into place— but Holden’s holding the final one close to his chest. Absently, he hopes Freddie would understand. 

“Damn, it’s good to be back,” Bill says, and Holden can’t help but agree. 

“We need sleep,” Wendy declares later that evening. Holden looks at her from where he’s been fiddling with a paperclip, his head lolling on his desk. She stands up and tosses a takeaway box into the trash with an air of finality. “We need showers and clean clothes and sleep.”

Bill yawns an agreement. “And coffee that doesn’t taste like a septic tank.” Holden wrinkles his nose at the simile, even though it’s not far off. “But we still don’t have a tail on Morgan. You and me’d be fine,” he tells Wendy, “but what about Romeo over here?” 

“He doesn’t know my address,” Holden lies, uselessly.

“You can stay at my place,” Wendy says. Something in her tone brokers no argument, so Holden doesn’t raise one. Bill just raises his eyebrows. 

They don’t bother to pack up their war zone of an office before they head out. Bill bids them goodnight in the parking lot, and Wendy pointedly takes the keys back from Holden and drives them to her apartment, which Holden… has never seen. It’s further from Quantico than his own place, in an up-and-coming neighborhood, rather than his run-down city block, but it’s kind of an incongruous image with academic, solitary Wendy. He gives her a sidelong glance when they dodge a few giggling kids in the hallway, but she doesn’t return it. 

Her apartment is small and tidy, which makes more sense, because Wendy’s at the office almost as much as he is. The paint is a little too trendy, but at least the couch looks like it’s been sat on, which is more than Holden can say about his. 

They stand awkwardly in the entry for a moment after the door swings shut behind them.

“Nice place,” Holden says.

“Thank you.” 

Another pause. Holden wonders at the last time Wendy had a guest. She looks like she doesn’t know what to do with him, either.

“Can I— can I use your shower?” he asks. He still feels like he needs to scrape a layer of _Morgan_ off his skin. Wendy nods hurriedly. 

“Of course. Down the hall, first door on the left. There’s a spare towel under the sink.”

“Thanks.”

Even though he knows he’d need a solid hour and a bristle brush before he’ll feel _clean_ enough, he showers fast so not to waste Wendy’s hot water. It’s when he steps out and faces the steamy mirror that he feels a bright spark of panic, because, though he usually sleeps in an undershirt and his boxers when it’s him and Bill on the road— and he’s sure after their little… _discussion,_ Wendy’s not too concerned about him infringing on any personal boundaries— but he’s somehow forgotten, in the blur of the evening, about the bruise, mottled and ugly, that circles his neck. In the stark bathroom lighting, it stands out grotesquely against his pale skin, like a fucking _collar._

He can’t sleep in his dress shirt, or Wendy would notice, and he wouldn’t have a good excuse. But he can’t just saunter out there with the evidence he’s been choked out on display. 

_You can’t hide it forever,_ his little voice says, and he sighs. 

No one else has seen it yet, other than Morgan. He supposes, if there has to be another person… it’s not terrible that it’d be Wendy. They’ve come a long way from the tension that had crescendoed during the Crawford situation, and she wouldn’t… she wouldn’t use it against him, he doesn’t think, like Bill might. 

He pulls on his clothes, sans button-up, and leaves the safety of the bathroom. 

When he comes out, Wendy’s produced a pillow and blanket for the couch. He hears a clatter in the kitchen alcove before she returns, and for some reason, he’s suddenly distracted by the fact that she’s barefoot. He’s never seen her barefoot before. 

When he looks up, her eyes, of course, settle at his throat. He hears the sharp intake of breath, and in the ensuing silence, he feels naked. Exposed. Raw. He braces for the questions, the berating, whatever. He can see it all behind her eyes, whirring like a slide projector.

Instead, the first thing she says is, “I have some ibuprofen.” And Holden honestly doesn’t know if he’s grateful or strangely… dissatisfied.

“No, thank you,” he replies. “It… it doesn’t hurt much, anymore. Unless you,” _touch it,_ he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t want her to think about what must have happened in the missing minutes between the session wrapping and Holden returning to the BSU. But he might as well have spoken, based on the downward tug at her mouth. 

But, again, she doesn’t say anything. Maybe she really is just going to let Holden play it off. She gives a vague gesture towards the kitchen. “Do you— can I get you anything else?” she asks. “I know it’s late, but— tea?” Her mouth twists. “Wine?” 

Holden laughs faintly. “No, I’m okay, thank you. Though after this is… all over, I’m gonna need to get wildly drunk.”

“Name the day,” she agrees. 

They stand in quiet again, until Holden takes a half-aborted step towards the couch, and Wendy gives another decisive nod. “Well, I’ll leave you to it,” she tells him. “I’m the door at the end, if you need anything.”

“Thanks. And thank you, again, for letting me stay here.”

“Of course, yeah. No problem.” She turns for the hallway, but stops before she gets far. Of course. It had been foolish for him to think he’d escape it. Once more, he braces for the onslaught.

“You did good work today,” is what she says, surprising him yet again.

He blinks. She doesn’t look away, so he musters up a half-smile, the best he can offer. “It’s like you said. Sometimes you have to fake a few things.”

He was aiming for light-hearted, but it must be the wrong thing to say, because abruptly, her expression turns deeply _sad._

“One day it’ll be different,” she says.

He nods, but doesn’t trust himself to say anything else without breaking down or running or _something,_ so with one last look she turns out the light and disappears into her apartment. 

After a moment where it’s just the sound of his own breathing in the little room, Holden lies down on the couch. He’s certain he’s not going to get any sleep— but the second he closes his eyes, the world fades away, and he dreams. 

He was seventeen, and his parents were dropping him off at the airport.

It was a common scene, Holden supposed, among kids his age, repeated across the globe as they stood in airports and bus terminals and bid their parents farewell as they headed off to college, but Holden also assumed those kids didn’t have fake passports with fake names clutched in their hands, or that their parents couldn’t go inside to hug them goodbye at the gate because they were international fugitives. 

International fugitives presumed dead for two decades, at that point, sure— but there were always eyes peeled for the ghosts of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham. Like the bogeyman: you knew he probably wasn’t real, but that didn’t stop your eye from following the shadow skittering in your peripheral vision. Because sometimes those shadows solidified.

So they stood outside the international departures terminal at Schiphol, in Amsterdam, a ways down the pavement from the rest of the foot traffic hurrying into the building, and his fathers wore hats and high-collared coats despite the warm weather. Holden’s luggage— only a single suitcase, nowhere close to everything he wished he could take with him from this life into the next— sat waiting at his feet. 

“You have the dorm address written down? And money for the cab?” Will asked again, reaching out to smooth Holden’s already perfectly smooth shirtfront, then up to brush an imaginary hair away from Holden’s forehead. Usually Holden would roll his eyes and grumble at the fretting, but this was the last time in who knew how long that he would see his fathers, so he leaned into the touch, and let Will seek the comfort of fussing just as much as Holden sought the comfort of being fussed over. 

“Yes,” Holden assured for the thousandth time. Will nodded, but he clearly wasn’t satisfied. He tugged at Holden’s shirtsleeves again. 

“Call us the second you get settled, okay? We want to hear all about the flight and the city and your roommate, and after that we’ll revert to letters, to tell us about your classes and your adventures, but—”

“But your first day is too important,” Tėtis finished for him. Hannibal was wearing his nervousness in a more buttoned-up fashion: spine tall and rigid, expression solemn and serious, not a tremor in his voice. But the smaller details, like the crease at his brow, the tick at his jaw, gave him away, and Holden’s heart clenched. 

Tėtis finally pressed the tin lunch box he’d been holding onto with white knuckles into Holden’s hands. “There are three meals in here, so you can avoid the offal they’ll try to serve you on the plane. I’ve included a list of what is to be eaten with what, and when, to avoid indigestion.”

That time Holden did roll his eyes, but it was fond. “Thank you,” he said sincerely. Those other, ordinary kids would have summers and holidays to return to their family’s home-cooked meals, but Holden wouldn’t have that luxury, and certainly not his Tėtis’ particular recipes. There were a million things Holden would miss, but those peaceful moments in the kitchen, helping Tėtis cook while Dad sat at the counter, watching— Holden would miss those like burning.

It had been a year since Holden had told his fathers he wanted to go to America to study. Not just academically— but to study its people, in all their violence and obsession and hidden depravity that had captivated Will years before, and had drawn Hannibal from Europe in his own youth. Under his fathers’ tutelage and tours, Holden knew Europe like the back of his hand, but America remained the forbidden empire, the one place he could never go, and like all forbidden things, it only made him want to go more.

He couldn’t; at least, not as Holden Graham-Lecter. But maybe, he had proposed over dinner, as all their most important discussions were held, he could become someone else, to keep their family, and their freedom, safe. 

His fathers hadn’t been resistant to the idea, per se. Naturally, they wanted Holden within arm’s reach, just as they were outside the airport, for Will to touch when he needed reassurance that Holden was safe and sound, for Hannibal to care for and protect and defend— where no one could hurt him. But they had always emphasized the importance of choice in Holden’s childhood, and they knew they had raised him to take care of himself. Holden’s future was in his own hands. 

So Hannibal reached out to his forgery contacts, and Holden was given a new passport that declared him American-born. Hannibal had asked him if he would like to change his name— Graham-Lecter had to be left behind, for obvious reasons, but would he like to start over as someone other than _Holden?_

Holden had declined. Dad had given him his name. He would never forsake it. When his dad had suddenly left the house and returned that evening with soaked shoes and eyes a little red-rimmed, no one commented.

He did choose _Ford_ for his new last name, however, because it felt unobtrusive, and what was more American than Ford automobiles? Sure, maybe it was a little Joe America, but it had made Dad laugh when Holden suggested it, so Ford it was. 

Will helped him edit his college admission essays, and Hannibal helped him find a suitable wardrobe, and over meals or beside the river or in his fathers’ study, that year became a review session of sorts, recapping self-defense and protective measures and what to do in case of emergencies, and more than that, like how to talk and behave and blend in, and the snowball grew and grew and grew and then there they were in Amsterdam, and suddenly Holden wished he could turn back time.

Or at least just… pause it for a moment longer. For him to breathe in his fathers’ smell and feel the warmth of their skin. Just a minute more. This was his idea, and he wanted it, but— just a minute more. 

Will read his mind, of course. His dad brushed his thumb across his cheekbone, and Holden wanted to close his eyes against the sting of tears, but he didn’t want to miss a second of seeing his fathers in flesh and blood in front of him. 

“We are so proud of you,” Will murmured. His own eyes shone, and Hannibal curled a solid steadying hand around Holden’s wrist. There was a lot unsaid, that Holden still understood: if he ever changed his mind he could come home in a heartbeat; if he needed help they would come to him just as quickly, death warrant be damned; and even if he got to America and decided to go a different path entirely and leave them behind, it would break their hearts but they would respect his decision. No one knew what waited ahead, and that's what made this goodbye sting all the more sharply.

Holden wasn’t sure who moved first, but in the next blink he found himself wrapped in his fathers’ strong arms, pressed between them in the safest place in the world, and he buried his face into Hannibal’s chest and let the tears fall. Hannibal carded fingers through his hair, and Will pressed a long, firm kiss to Holden’s temple.

There was nothing Holden wouldn’t do for his family. He hadn’t told them, but that was another reason for his wanting to go to America. He needed to know what he could do to keep their future safe. So they would never have to fear someone coming to destroy that which they had earned and so deeply deserved. 

Finally, their embrace fractured apart, and Holden pulled reluctantly away. 

“I love you,” he said, with a watery smile.

“Be brave, _mylimasis,”_ Tėtis told him. “This is not an end, but a beginning.”

Holden sucked in a breath, enough to fill his lungs, and with one last look at his fathers, their fingers tangled as they stood on the pavement, watching him go— he went inside. 

He held that breath as he checked in at ticketing, as the grave-faced woman inspected his passport and his nervous smile before stamping his ticket and letting him pass. He held his breath as he went through security, watching the guards out the corner of his eye, the weapons hanging heavy at their hips, their eyes scanning the travelers streaming past them like trout upstream. He didn’t exhale until he finally lowered himself into one of the hard-backed chairs at his gate. The world spun around him.

And it would keep spinning as he boarded his flight, and as he ate the meals Hannibal had given him, and as he barely slept under the plane’s threadbare blanket, and as the plane glided over the Manhattan skyline. As Holden caught a cab and arrived at his dorm, as he met his roommate and called his parents from a payphone. As he unpacked and sought out Molly and Walter Graham, as he studied and graduated, as he applied and was accepted to Quantico, as he watched a man blow his own head off. As he met Bill, and Wendy, and Ed and Brudos and Speck and Jack Crawford, and Morgan. The world would keep spinning, and Holden would keep holding on with white-knuckles— just as he held the knife over Crawford’s neck, and guided it through a pig’s tongue. Just as he has it poised now. 

And he’s not letting go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is my favorite chapter lol


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we've reached the home stretch!! thank you so much for sticking around <3

Freddie hadn’t been kidding about TattleCrime’s renewed rise in readership. It was already a popular tabloid after the astonishing reveal of Hannibal the Cannibal, but it grew a cult following after Dolarhyde and Lecter’s subsequent escape, and its stories have inspired movies and books and tv specials— all of which Lounds’ growing publishing agency have been happy to endorse, so long as they were adequately compensated.

Over the years it’s served as a platform for a public glamorization of high-profile homicides, including some of the FBI’s own cases— though of course the Bureau tries to keep a tighter lid on things these days. But the Wolf Trap incident had breathed new life into the fire, and now its popularity is bound to reach incendiary heights, with the public damnation of a  _ second _ Verger. 

That morning, the latest issue hits stands and is snatched up so quickly Holden and Wendy have to go to three different newsstands around Quantico before they find a copy. They grab coffees and take it back to the BSU and read it aloud with Bill.

Freddie had chosen the perfect cover: a split image of Morgan alongside an old photograph of Mason, pre-face-eating. Holden hadn’t seen many photographs of Mason before, but he’s as wild-haired and manic-eyed as the stories had led Holden to imagine. 

And then there’s Morgan. His photo shows him a few years younger than he is now, his hair longer and unkempt in a frozen wind, and his stubble barely a shadow and unable to hide the last clinging curves of baby fat. It had probably been taken at a fundraiser or party, but it caught a moment where Morgan was clearly displeased with something: his eyes deep in his skull, staring out at an unseen subject, his mouth a thin sneer, like he’d been gritting his teeth behind closed lips. Where Mason is madness, Morgan is malice, but they share the same darkness in their eyes. It almost makes Holden queasy to look at. 

Almost. Mostly, there’s delight. 

Especially at the fatal headline:  _ Daddy’s Little Boy— Does Murder Run In The Blood? _

The article features everything Holden had advised, and then some, even having scrounged up some testimonials from freaking  _ Interpol, _ who have apparently had their suspicions about the inner workings of Verger Holdings over the years, and a few connections the FBI’s own investigation had embarrassingly left unconnected— 

“Someone wanna tell me how the  _ hell _ we didn’t know the Gardener twins’ mother worked for Verger Meat?” Bill snaps, halfway through. “Better yet, which rookie screwed the pooch, so I can  _ beat their ass?” _

Holden’s inclined to agree, since that information would have made their walk from Morgan to murderer much shorter, but he also has a growing inkling Morgan’s got his fingers in a few pockets in the Bureau, much like Freddie herself. 

The proposal and subsequent dissection of Morgan’s darkest secrets is interwoven with the narrative of Mason Verger’s rise and fall, how the father (and his father before him) had paid off cops and tap-danced through loopholes, and even if Holden hadn’t known Morgan to be a psychopath, he’d be persuaded by the end.

To Holden’s surprise, though really he should have seen it coming, there’s a picture of himself in the article, too. It’s a long shot of him at the cemetery, striding towards the camera with his coat billowing around him, but he’s turned slightly away from the lens, glancing down at a headstone he’d been trying to avoid tripping over. Holden doesn’t mind— he’s just grateful she didn’t include any images she might’ve captured at the bar. It seems she’d officially chosen not to blow up his life alongside Morgan’s. 

In fact, besides their Gardener oversight, she’d painted a considerably generous picture of the FBI and their investigation, praising their dogged commitment to the case even after it threatened one of its own. There’s no hint of a romantic entanglement, only the wannabe Hannibal Lecter targeting the new Will Graham. 

Holden’s tempted to call Freddie up and tell her good job, but he has a prior engagement. 

“Alright,” Bill grunts, closing the cover and taking off his reading glasses. “And thus blow open the gates of Hell.”

_ “Hell is empty. All the devils are here,” _ Holden quotes. Wendy huffs. He’d asked her a couple nights before, after he and Bill had returned from the diner, how she’d had such an easy time accepting his accusation of Morgan’s psychopathy, and Alana’s potential complicity; she’d told him she had an easier time accepting the corruption of her idols after the fall of Crawford. It seems Freddie’s article has sealed the deal. 

“You know what to do?” she asks Holden now, who nods. Alana is going to cling to her son’s innocence with bloodied nails, unless Holden can open her eyes, and the angle they’re going with is to persuade Alana to testify against Morgan—  _ for his own sake, _ they’ll say. After all, Alana had been instrumental in taking down Mason— if Holden can convince her she can save her son from the same fate, have him interned instead of executed, he’s praying she’ll take it. 

“Then you better get out of here before Shepard shows up,” Bill says. “Man’s gonna have a heart attack.”

Holden grabs his briefcase and his jacket, feeling a little like he’s pulling on his armor, readying to go to war. Bill and Wendy don’t offer any words of encouragement or final, moving speech— just a firm nod each before he turns and marches out into the daylight. 

He prays— to whatever God is watching— that this is the last time he’ll ever set foot in the BSHCI. He also prays that he walks out. __

It’s business as usual as he arrives— the unsmiling secretary, the unsmiling orderly— but, at the same time, everything has changed. He doesn’t pretend to think Alana doesn’t know about the article by now, or that Morgan doesn’t, either. He does know, however, beyond a doubt, that Morgan still doesn’t know about Holden’s meetings with Alana, and won’t be making any surprise appearances at the hospital today. At least Holden has that in his favor. 

Only when the orderly swings open the door to the director’s office, Alana is sitting grave-faced on the couch, one leg crossed over the other, looking regal and lethal. She doesn’t greet Holden as he steps inside, and the orderly shuts the door behind him with an ominous click. In turn, Holden doesn’t take off his jacket, or pretend at familiarity. 

After a century under her narrowed glare, Alana raises her arm and lets a long length of fabric dangle from her pinched fingers like a dead snake, trailing to the tips of her shoes. The silver tie, which Holden had left behind on the study floor. 

“Is this yours?”

_ Not anymore, _ Holden thinks, but he doesn’t say it. Rather, he knows it’s another not-quite question, so he doesn’t say anything at all. 

“It’s not polite to leave messes in other people’s homes,” Alana continues coldly. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you that?”

Hannibal had taught him many, many things, but not quite what to do in this particular moment, facing down your psychopathic ex’s mom. He knows the  _ mess  _ she’s referring to is the pig farm, and the tongueless sow, not the tie— because of course she’s figured out it was him: no one else had been to the Estate since Crawford’s funeral, he’s certain, so no one would think to outsource their crime scene art materials there. 

Holden is more than a little tired of the games, though. 

“Alana, we need to talk,” he starts, but she’s shaking her head, cutting him off.

“I thought that was what we had been doing. Talking.” She stands, then, curling the tie slowly around her fist like a boxer wrapping his knuckles for a fight, before she takes up her cane from its customary position at her side. She leans on it heavily as she slowly ambles towards him. “Though maybe that word is inapt, when one party has been  _ lying.” _

“I never lied to you,” Holden lies. He knows one step backwards and he’ll feel the wood of the door beneath his spine, but he holds his ground as she approaches. She’s not the predator here.  _ He _ is— he just has to pretend at being prey, if he wants to put her at ease.

“You told me you cared about my son.”

“I  _ do,” _ Holden insists, another lie for his tally. “That’s why I’m here, we need to—”

“Not here,” she bites out, and he blinks. He keeps his face blank even as realization dawns, as her eyes flick down to his jacket. By trying to win into Morgan’s paranoia with the article, he’s won into hers: she thinks he’s wearing a wire, a wire that’s transmitting back to an FBI van somewhere, even though the parking lot beyond the window is visibly barren. And so she’ll want to take them someplace she thinks a signal won’t be able to reach, and Holden knows exactly the place she’s thinking of. “Follow me.”

This isn’t the fight, so he goes. She leads him down the familiar path into the depths of the hospital, each doorway heralding a new ring descending into hell, until they arrive in the dark hall he’d once called a foyer. But instead of leading him into Hannibal’s cell like she had before, she takes the keys from her pocket and opens the door to Will’s. 

She gestures for Holden to go in first. He debates whether to fake a reassuring smile to soothe her, or if that’ll just make her angrier, so he settles for dipping his head in assent as she follows him inside, and the thunk of the door swinging shut sends an unbidden chill scurrying down his spine, his hackles raising instinctively.

_ This isn’t the fight, _ the little voice murmurs, but it trembles slightly with unease, like Holden.  _ This isn’t the fight.  _

He puts his back to Will’s cell. He doesn’t want to look at its sterile furniture, its bricked windows. 

“Alana, I know this isn’t what you want to hear—”

“I didn’t know you and Freddie Lounds were such pals,” Alana interrupts again. She’s not looking at him but at the cell behind him, her eyes tracking some invisible occupant. “Imagine my surprise when TattleCrime showed up on my front step this morning.” 

“Morgan isn’t who you think he is, he—”

“Careful, Holden,” she snaps, and Holden falls silent. Alana takes a slow step away down the length of the cell, then another, her cane clicking like nails on the concrete. When she faces him again, the lights overhead throw the angles of her face into gaunt, ghoulish shadows. 

“Do you know why I wanted us to have these conversations?” she asks. Holden waits. “When you were up there giving your eulogy, all stammering, boyish earnestness… I saw Will Graham.” As her son had sat beside her and seen a monster in hiding— so, Holden supposes, she wasn’t far off the mark. “But it was the Will I knew  _ before.  _ Before everything. Before Hannibal got to him. Before I lost my friend. And I thought to myself, it  _ should _ have been Will up there, giving Jack’s eulogy. It should have been Will at the funeral, as his  _ friend, _ not the man who killed him.”

Then she does something strange: she unwinds the tie from her knuckles and drapes it around her neck. She doesn’t tie it, just lets it hang there, a little rumpled, as she takes another step further away. Sweat slides down the nape of Holden’s neck. “But I couldn’t save Will.  I let my fears regarding my… my professional curiosity get in the way of actually helping him. And I'll regret that for as long as I live, I see that now. But I thought if I helped you… I thought…” 

As she looks at the cell, she lets go of her cane. It clatters to the floor, making Holden jolt, but she doesn’t reach for it; instead, her hands lift to her neck like she’s about to tie the tie, right hand going to the left end, left hand to the right. She’s  _ readying, _ and Holden can see it in his mind’s eye: in the next breath, she’ll lunge, she’ll wrap it around his throat just like Morgan did, she’ll pull it tight and they  _ won’t have time to— _ “I thought this room was for Will,” she says, her voice hard as the stone that surrounds them and deadens the sound. “Maybe it’s not.”

Holden’s pulse is ticking wildly fast now, but he can’t name his dread. “Alana, I’m sorry, truly, but we really don’t have time for this. Morgan is  _ dangerous, _ and I think you know that. I think you’re scared right now because you saw the truth in that article, the same truth you’ve been seeing for years now, but it’s not too late. You need to get him help.”

But Alana doesn’t move. “I am helping him.” 

And then she chokes herself. 

Holden is so shocked that for a moment, he’s paralyzed where he stands, as he watches her yank the two ends of the tie into a snare around her own throat. The skin of her neck wrinkles like fabric as it’s twisted in opposite directions, darkening with each second as the circulation is cut off, like a thread wrapped around the bulb of a fingertip. Her mouth opens in a wide  _ O,  _ her tongue lolling at her lips, and Holden watches, horrified, as her eyes start to bulge. 

Then the ground releases him and he lurches towards her, but he’s too far away and too slow, and she stumbles backwards and shrieks. It’s guttural and raspy, the tone cut off by the chokehold, but it still echoes off the stone walls like a banshee scream. “What are you doing?” Holden yells, the sounds colliding. He wonders if the orderlies and the secretaries, even the patients, can hear it through the ceiling, the stories above them. “Stop, you’re hurting yourself!” 

And just as quickly as it started, it’s over, and Alana drops the fabric to the ground, but it had been enough that Holden can already see the fiery red mark at her neck, the one that will purple and swell until it matches the bruise around Holden’s own. But Alana’s not finished. As the tie drops, she swoops down and grabs her cane, but she’s twisting at the shining silver neck and pulling out…  _ is that a fucking knife? _

_ “Is that a knife?” _ he asks, shrilly.

“Do you like it?” she rasps. “I had it made when Hannibal shoved me out a window.”

“Abigail,” Holden corrects immediately, then cringes when Alana’s face warps. And then she’s screaming again, but this time she’s charging.

She slashes the dagger through the air, and Holden flings up his hands on instinct to stop her, only the knife cuts razor-sharp across his palms. But the bright shock of pain drags with it blinding clarity:  _ this is what she wants. _ She’s Bedelia, she’s Abigail, she’s painting a picture-perfect crime scene of her own, writing the narrative that Holden attacked her, tried to strangle her, and she merely swung the blade in self defense while he was reaching for her. He feels blood, slick and hot, spilling from his hands, stares as drops splash to the cement floor. 

Alana’s slashing again, but this time Holden sees it cutting through the air in slow-motion.

He has a decision to make. One part of him wants nothing more than to fight back— his fathers had taught him how, after all— and he knows, he  _ knows _ it would be all too easy, to go for her weak leg and send her sprawling across the blood-spattered ground, wrestle the blade from her hand and give it a new home in her chest. Because he knows either way that Alana has resolved that she can’t let him leave here alive.

She intends for him to die down here, just as she intended for Hannibal to die here, and Will, in this very room. Even Holden’s gravesite is inherited. 

But this isn’t the fight.  _ This isn’t the fight. _ So Holden lets the blade come down once more, catching him across the meat of his forearm, this time, slicing through his sleeve, and he cries out. He ducks to the ground, but instead of unforgiving rock, his hand finds silk. As Alana spins to go for his back, Holden whirls to meet her, landing that oh-so-satisfying blow to her hip even though it’s softer than he’d prefer, and letting gravity yank her into him. Her hand opens in her flail and the blade clatters away, and Holden takes the opening to wrap the silk not around Alana’s neck, but her wrists. He leaves bloody prints as he binds her hands, and the pain is glaring, but he doesn’t slow. 

She’s screaming bloody murder, but Holden starts talking, tamping down on his own adrenaline-fueled tremor and keeping his voice smooth and measured even as she howls. It can’t be long now.  _ It can’t be long now.  _ “It’s over, Alana,” he says. “It’s over.”

There’s so much he wants to say to her. That she did die in that kitchen. That his fathers won. That she’ll die, here, too, even as she’s dragged out alive. That her life is ending in this moment, at Holden’s hands. But instead he keeps saying the words again and again, until they bleed into nonsense in his head, all sound, no meaning. “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.”

And then the door crashes open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “for some reason, I thought of my first fight… with Tyler” lol
> 
> ALSO lmao the cane sword idea made me cackle when i thought of it so i had to put it in. what can i say the vergers like their concealed weapons, and you GOTTA admit that’s something alana would’ve done what a queen im sorry im so mean to her
> 
> ALSO ALSO morgan’s history loosely intertwines with that of molson verger, his grandfather, in the og book series: molson set up a mission in africa that he then grotesquely abused, so morgan then took that inspiration to set up one of his own in south america. rotten apples, trees, etc. 


	15. Chapter 15

The door crashes open, and reveals Bill, his gun raised, and Wendy, with a ring of keys in her hand. 

Alana and Holden turn to face them at the same time, and after a beat of shock, Alana collapses, letting her limbs go heavy as she falls to her knees on the floor and dissolves into sobs. 

“Oh thank God,” she gasps, “Please help me, he— he attacked me, please, please help me.”

Holden turns to look at Bill and Wendy, who stare back at him. He exhales heavily.

“You sure took your time,” he says.

Bill rolls his eyes, but lowers his gun once he sees Holden’s got Alana’s hands in a bind; he fishes out his handcuffs instead as he walks over. Wendy and a cluster of agents and techs filter in after. “Sorry. We had to call the director for the codes to the doors once we realized where you’d gone, and the orderly put up a hell of a fight over the spare keys.”

“I never liked that guy,” Holden tsks.

Wendy’s peering speculatively around the room, resolutely ignoring Alana on the floor. “Whose cell is this?”

“She made it for Graham,” Holden answers as he hands a still-gasping Alana over to Bill. Alana stares up at them, confusion and outrage and her faux terror warring across her face. 

“What’s going on?” she demands, her voice still croaking at the edges. “What are you doing?” she cries as Bill clasps the handcuffs shut around her wrists with a melodious clink of finality. “This man just attacked me! What are you doing?” As Bill carefully unravels the tie and reaches out for an evidence bag from a tech, she spots Wendy. “Wendy! What’s going on? Help me!”

Wendy still ignores her. “Graham?” she directs to Holden. 

“Yep. But then she said it was going to be for me, instead.”

“What are you talking about? This is absurd!” Alana shrieks, attempting to wrench her arms from Bill, but he holds onto her with an iron grip. _“Wendy!”_

A field medic scurries over with a few swaths of gauze, which she winds around Holden’s bleeding palms, and the gash on his forearm. He’s hoping there’s an ambulance on the way to properly clean him up, because who knows what germs are down here, and he’d really prefer not getting an infection. He glimpses the wounds before the bandages cover them up: Alana had sliced him perpendicular to his heart lines. The irony makes him want to both laugh and punch something.

With the blood staunched, he waves off the medic and goes to stand alongside Bill. Holden crouches down to eye-level with Alana, and without breaking eye contact, he reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out Freddie’s miniature tape recorder; holding it up for Alana to clearly see, he clicks the stop button, and the little tape halts in its tracks. And so do Alana’s protests.

“Technology just keeps getting smaller, doesn’t it?” He smiles. She stares at him. Disbelief colors her red and freezes the words on her tongue. 

“No jury is going to believe a word you say once they hear that tape, about your son or otherwise,” Bill tells her. “Alana Bloom, you are under arrest for assaulting a federal officer, and on suspicion of aiding and abetting a murderer.”

And then there’s Wendy, her voice soft and sad over Holden’s shoulder: “It’s over, Alana.”

Alana starts thrashing again, but this time like a fish that knows it’s been caught. Bill hefts her to her feet and passes her off to two agents who grip her forearms tightly enough that they’ll probably bruise like her self-inflicted throat wound. One of them starts reading her her Miranda rights and they haul her out of the cell, up to the waiting squad cars. She’ll be dragged out of the BSHCI kicking and screaming, past her secretary and her orderlies, loud enough that her prisoners might be able to hear her echoing down those shiny white hallways, but she won’t be gone long. She’ll probably soon find herself right back inside as a permanent resident. 

Apparently Bill has the same thought as they watch her go. “Ain’t that a coincidence? Two perfectly good empty cells, and two psychos to fill them with.” 

Holden huffs as he drops the tape recorder into a waiting evidence bag. He won’t need a weapon for the next fight on his docket. “There’s no such thing as a coincidence.”

Wendy exhales. “One down, one to go.”

Their little trio shares a smile, reveling in their victory. 

Then Bill looks down at the floor. “Is that a _cane sword?”_

Holden leads the way up the stairs.

Well, Wendy starts to, first, making for the door once Alana’s shrieks have finally faded away, but Holden’s quick on his feet— metaphorically, that is. In reality, he stumbles over his shoes to get in front of her. It earns him a stare from both partners, and he flushes.

But it’s intentional. They’ve had a victory here, yes, but Holden can’t stride out all fine and dandy and self-assured if he wants his act that evening to be believable. He’s probably going to wind up with another unofficial therapist when this is all over, based on the look Wendy is giving him and all the signs of trauma he’s playing up— but he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it. 

For now, let them think he just doesn’t want to be the last to leave this cell; that he’s afraid this is all some elaborate ruse to slam the door on him before he can get out. It may be illogical, but anxiety doesn’t always listen to logic. 

“Sorry, just— Can I go first?” he asks, a little desperately. Bill’s brow stays furrowed, but Wendy’s clears with understanding, and she gestures wordlessly to the door.

The stairwell feels longer on the climb out than it did on the descent. The dramatic sconces lining the stairwell— all the more ridiculous now their ominousness has disintegrated— throw their shadows dancing across the stones and make the spiderwebs glitter in their shadowy corners. 

He’s grateful the signs of excitement are the same as shock: his limbs feel inexplicably heavy, like they’re dragging against some invisible current with each step, and there’s sweat cooling at his hairline, making him shiver. And his hands are— his hands are _tingling._ His cuts throb beneath their bandages, yes, but it’s something else, too, that he can’t just blame away on adrenaline.

Behind him, they can probably see his shaking hands, his seemingly hesitant steps, but if they notice, they don’t say anything, and he doesn’t turn around to look. It’s Orpheus leading Eurydice out of hell, it’s Plato exiting the cave. It’s his fathers, swimming to the surface of a roiling ocean. It’s Holden, freeing himself from purgatory. 

He doesn’t turn around, because then they’d see the smile blooming slow and sharp and feral across his face, and then they’d never make it out. 

With each step, he feels lighter and lighter, almost dizzyingly so. He can’t remember the last time he felt such _delight,_ unless— unless it was the day he saw his fathers again. If only they could see him now. The thought makes him grin even wider. He’d sworn this place would never hold him, just as it hadn’t held them, and he’s kept his word.

His hands buzz like static as they push open the hospital’s front door and he reemerges into the open air. He tries not to inhale too dramatically, but he has to admit, the wind on his face has never felt this good. But there will be more time to revel later. 

The previously empty parking lot is buzzing now, and will likely only continue to overrun once the media catches word of Alana’s arrest— though hopefully they can hold that off for a few more hours. Freddie’s golden egg is turning into a golden hen house, but their plan isn’t finished yet.

In a snap, Holden has his mask back on and his grin tucked away. Clearing his throat, he darts a glance at his partners over his shoulder. “We have eyes on Morgan?” he asks.

There’s no ambulance waiting in the parking lot; they’d probably just brought along one, not expecting Alana to go all Norma Bates on Holden, so it had already sped away with its single masochistic occupant. The cuts on his hands are long but not particularly deep, so while stitches are likely in his future, he’ll be fine for the trip back to Quantico. They are starting to itch, though, so he curls his fingers into fists, letting his nails bite into his palms.

Bill points the path to his own car rather than Holden’s, which answers the question. “Nope. A team went to his office right after you left, but according to his secretary he’d never shown up.” So Holden will have to leave his car at the BSHCI for now, because there’s no way they’ll let him go off on his own with Morgan in the wind. 

“We prepared for this,” Wendy reminds them. “This is why we set up the meeting at the church. He’ll think you’re coming alone—” She nods to Holden.

“And instead he’ll get the whole FBI waiting for him at the end of the aisle,” Bill finishes.

Holden doesn’t say anything as he opens the passenger door for Wendy. He takes the back seat for himself. 

It’s Bill’s personal car, so there’s no cage separating the front and back seats like in an FBI cruiser, but as they pull onto the highway back to Quantico, Holden can’t help but think this is how this would have ended, if the events in the basement had played out just a little bit to the left— if he hadn’t been able to rein in his truer instincts: Holden in the back of a cruiser, being carted off towards his fate. Maybe that scene will play out one day, regardless. He wonders if he’d want Bill and Wendy to be the ones to bring him in, or someone else. 

It’s a long drive ahead of them, so Bill turns on the radio, and he and Wendy start to chat about something Holden can’t hear, but as he leans forward there’s a twinge at the centers of his hands.

Cradling them in his lap, he uncurls his fists to inspect his wound dressing. And there, cast in the slant of sunlight through the car window, instead of his bloodied fingertips— he finds claws. 

They’re rather beautiful, really: bone white nails, shining almost silver, edged in a deep red where they protrude from irritated flesh. Distantly, he knows, of course, that it’s only an illusion, a trick of his mind, his inherited over-active imagination— but still he bites the inside of his cheek to hide his wondrous gasp as he flexes his fingers and watches the claws glint in the light, sharp and deadly. It’s like Alana’s strike had triggered their growth. The blade had cut open the webbing of his monstrous chrysalis, and now… 

“I wonder what’ll happen to Shepard,” Wendy’s voice breaks through, and the claws vanish.

It brings Holden back to reality with a jolt, and he inhales sharply. He squeezes his fist open and shut a few times, but only finds innocuous, normal hands again. He feels the sudden stabbing keen of loss. 

Wendy’s words take a second longer to process. “What do you mean?” he makes himself ask.

He meets Bill’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he announced he’s stepping down.”

“Stepping down?”

“Alana was no Hannibal, but she still gained the trust of an FBI Unit Chief and weaseled her way inside, probably for information she shouldn’t be privy to. In the eyes of the top honchos, that’s gonna be the equivalent of Crawford letting Graham and Lecter have their way with him.” Bill huffs. “Again.”

“They’ll probably exile him, like they did Jack,” Wendy says. “‘Suggested retirement.’”

Holden doesn’t know the extent of Alana’s friendship with Shepard, but he does know, beyond a doubt, that Alana hadn’t known the truth about her son; she’d only read the TattleCrime article, and panicked. She’d taken Hannibal’s advice in his kitchen all those years ago, and let herself be blind to the ugly truth mutating within her own family. He doesn’t say as much to his partners, though— better for them to think Alana’s complicity ran that deep. 

When they finally reach Quantico, the building is a madhouse, again: agents and interns and secretaries running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and the phone is ringing off the hook— probably the public tip line, with their theories regarding anyone remotely connected to Morgan Verger. Public damnations usually had this effect: suddenly everyone is convinced their neighbor or weird uncle is in on it, too, and the FBI have to find any scraps of truth in all the mess. It works in his favor, though, because spread thin, they’ll still send every available agent to the church tonight, and won’t be able to spare any elsewhere. 

They head straight for Shepard’s office. When they reach the bullpen, an agent that’s part of the evening’s tactical team attaches to their group with a status report. “Still no sign of Morgan,” the agent tells them, “But we did manage to nab a Verger.”

“What?” Bill asks, and the agent points ahead as they round the corner.

The blinds of Shepard’s office are open, and while there’s no sight of the man himself through the glass, there is one occupant, sitting alone in one of the chairs facing the desk. 

“Margot,” Wendy says. 

“She’s lawyered up. We put her there until they get here,” the agent explains as they all come to a stop and stare, like they’re facing an animal at a zoo exhibit; the last of a dying species. The agent heads off again, and the movement must catch Margot’s attention, because she turns to face them. 

The last time Holden had seen Margot had been in the window of the Verger Estate, staring down at him, stony and suspicious. When their eyes meet again through the glass of Shepard’s windows, there’s that stoniness again, but it’s fleeting, quickly shoved aside by an off-kilter fear, and the realization hits him with all the subtlety of a semi-truck: _Margot knew._

 _Of course._ She _had_ to have known. After all, she grew up with Mason, and their father before him, in that big lonely fortress in the middle of nowhere, frozen in space and time. She would have recognized all the signs, the omens, as they manifested in her son; but unlike Alana, she wouldn’t have realized their meaning too late— she would’ve seen them for what they were instantly, the way the silence of the empty pig farm was unnatural from the second she couldn’t hear the squealing.

 _This_ was natural. This was her bloodied inheritance, her legacy, and instead of running, she chose it, just like how she chose to bring back the pigs. She’d rather have the horror of the familiar than the horror of the unknown. It’s interesting, really, and Holden sympathizes, as best he can bother. He’d pitied Crawford for his lonely death, but Holden has no pity to spare for Margot Verger, not with her son’s bruise on his neck and her wife’s cuts on his hands. But he can still understand.

And because he understands, he decides, he’ll give her a choice. He’ll give her an open door, hers to take if she wants it: one last chance to rid herself of her brother’s ghost. If she doesn’t, well. Holden’s not here to save anyone. 

He’s making for the door before he even registers his feet have started moving, but Wendy’s hand snags his wrist to stop him. “You can’t go in there. Anything she says to you would be inadmissible.”

Holden gives his best puppy eyes. “I know, but— look at her, Wendy. I—” he falters. “If that was me, or you—”

Surprisingly, it’s Bill who heaves a resigned sigh. “Fine. You get five minutes. And I’m shouting bloody murder if I see Shepard coming.” At Wendy’s reproachful glare, Bill shrugs. “What? What damage can he do in five minutes?”

“This is Holden we’re talking about,” she grumbles pointedly, but only narrows her eyes at Holden. “Four minutes, fifty-nine seconds. Four minutes, forty-eight…” Holden scrambles for the door. 

Margot leaps up when he hurries in, and that’s his clue that she doesn’t know it’s his fault she’s here. She moves towards him but her gait is wobbly, like her legs are about to go out from under her, and she reaches for Holden the same moment he reaches for her, and she all but collapses into his arms. He can feel Bill and Wendy’s gazes boring holes into the side of his head, and he’d like nothing better than to draw shut the blinds on Shepard’s windows like Margot had dropped the curtain, but it’s another stage and another performance, even if they can’t hear the words. He’s here to play the bleeding heart, for one more victim of the Verger-Blooms.

“Easy,” he murmurs as he adjusts his hold on her, mostly because his palms are stinging against her skin. 

“What—” Margot’s voice is watery, the emotion a physical pressure on her vocal chords. “What’s happening? Why are they saying— Morgan— my baby—” she presses a hand to her red mouth, and the obscene diamond ring glints there on her finger under the ugly fluorescents, and he remembers she doesn’t know about Alana yet, either. 

“We think— The evidence isn’t looking good, Margot. I’m so sorry.” Holden swallows. “There’s something else you need to know.” He pulls his hands away from her and shows her his bandages, the red seeping through the cloth. “Alana did this.”

Margot rears back, owl-eyed. “What?” Her eyes flash to Holden’s, and he can see the threat of accusation in her searching gaze. She trusts her wife implicitly, of course she would, so her train of thought is that Holden must have done something to warrant it. “When? Why would she do that?” 

She never says _no, that’s absurd,_ that Alana isn’t capable of such a thing, because it probably doesn’t occur to her to lie to protect her wife. They’re Vergers, they’re untouchable, they’re gods, killable only by each other. _Until now._

Holden almost, _almost_ smiles.

“Just now. I went to the BSHCI to talk to her. Margot,” he says, as gently as he can, “do you know where Morgan is? It’s very important that we find him.”

She shakes her head, but it’s not denial of an answer. “He’d— he’s—"

The words tumble uselessly from the cliff’s edge of her lips. She doesn’t know where her son is, or she’d be there with him, Holden realizes, because that’s what his fathers would do if it were him on the run. But that’s the difference between Morgan and Holden. Morgan’s abandoning his parents in his desperation. Holden would die for his.

She must realize this, too— that if it were Mason, and it might as well be, he’d be dust in the wind by now, and Holden watches as her face closes off like an avalanche. Any chance of reaching her vanishes. She won’t take the door. She’ll be just another casualty, and though she might not live the rest of her life behind a glass wall, she might as well. 

A glance to the side shows Bill tapping his watch in warning, and the only thing Holden can do now is give Margot a warning of her own; one she hadn’t received from his fathers, all those years ago, though the message will be the same. He takes her wrists in his hands, even against the bite of pain. 

“Then you need to go, Margot,” he says. “Go, and don’t look back.”

She blinks, uncomprehending. “What?”

He glances out the window again, and Wendy’s brow is furrowed, like she knows he’s doing something he shouldn’t be doing. When he faces Margot, her eyes are darkening as his words sink in like needles through her skin. Alana probably told her, a century ago, of Hannibal’s words that fateful night. 

“Don’t be brave,” he tells her, just to watch her flinch. “Be blind,” —and then Bill raps his knuckles on the glass, only neither of them jump; but he knows it means Shepard’s on his way, and Holden’s dead meat if he catches him here. “This is your chance to leave, before you can’t anymore.”

Margot’s voice is hard as rock. “This is my _family,_ Holden. Could you turn your back on yours?”

No, of course he couldn’t. But there’s fire and brimstone razing Margot’s kingdom to the ground behind her, and if she stays, she’ll find herself crumbling to salt, too. 

“Get away from me,” Margot hisses.

Holden shrugs. “Suit yourself.” 

He drops her wrists, hoping they’ve stained, and rejoins Wendy and Bill just as Shepard makes it to the atrium. His voice echoes through the whole wing, drawing every pair of eyes from the bullpen. A hush falls over the room, so Shepard’s words ring all the clearer as he storms towards them; even the phones seem to know to pause their incessant ringing.

“Ford! The _hell_ do you think you’re doing!”

Holden keeps his face calm. “Looking for you, sir.”

“To apologize, I goddamn hope,” Shepard snarls. “I’ve got every major news network from here to Seattle crawling down my throat, and I can’t prove it was you who yammered to Lounds, but I know it was. You never know when to hold your goddamn tongue, do you? That family could’ve done things for your little project beyond your wildest dreams, but you just _had_ to blow it up.” 

Their little trio exchanges glances. “We arrested Alana Bloom this afternoon,” Wendy tells Shepard, and the frost in her voice gives even Holden goosebumps. “She attacked Holden at the BSHCI, and we have her confession on tape proving she knew about Morgan Verger’s exploits.” As she speaks, Holden brings his hands behind his back, and ever so slowly, so he won’t draw attention, starts to unwind his bandages. 

“If anything, the TattleCrime article saved our asses,” Bill adds, “considering the level of influence the Verger-Bloom family was about to have in the BSU.”

_“You—”_

“We’re happy we could help, sir, though we are sorry for the extra work. If there’s anything else we can do, please let us know,” Holden finishes. “But if that’s all, sir, I’d really like to get this checked out,” and Holden splays his naked palms wide for Shepard to see the gory mess, just to watch all the color drain from the man’s face. And for their rapt audience— the whole of the FBI, basically— the image is loud and effective: Holden’s blood is on Shepard’s hands. 

For a long moment, all Shepard can do is gape like a hooked fish. Finally, he blusters unintelligibly and stomps to his office, where, unfortunately, he’ll just find another fire waiting for him. 

The show over, the bullpen slowly gets back to work, murmurs rising to a din as they undoubtedly discuss the encounter. Holden faces his partners. 

“That was dramatic,” Bill huffs. Holden gives a fatigued smile. 

“If it’s the last time I see the guy, I wanted to leave a lasting impression,” he says simply, and Bill barks a startled laugh, until a stab of pain shoots through Holden’s palms and he winces, then Bill grabs Holden’s wrist and inspects his hands with a grimace. 

“It was also stupid, but that’s not surprising. I’ll take him down to medical,” Bill tells Wendy, and she nods.

“I’ll go talk to tactical.” 

Their trip to medical takes a little longer than expected; by the time Holden and Bill make their way back to Wendy and their team for the evening, it’s almost time for them to head to the church. The BSU is crowded for once when they enter, all eyes on them both in the Bureau and out, and Holden tries not to fidget under the stares. 

At his sides, his hands feel tight with their new stitches. He flexes them tentatively and wonders if the claws will make a reappearance later that evening. He hopes they will. 

There’s a brief review of the plan before everyone scatters to gather their things. Holden trails Bill to his desk, which isn’t odd: they’ll be driving separately to the church, Bill and Holden in one car, Wendy in her own, so that they’re more mobile. Holden’s car is still at the BSHCI.

Bill’s shrugging into his coat when Holden clears his throat. “Hey, Bill?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you give me a ride home?”

Bill freezes. Holden’s met with a blank look at first, before Bill’s brow knits together. “What? This is your catch.”

Holden looks down diffidently, and starts to pick at the edges of his bandages. “I know, I just… I don’t really… I don’t really want to see him again,” Holden says quietly. “If it’s okay.”

Another long silence, and Holden doesn’t peer up at Bill’s face, but he can guess the debate that’s struggling across his features: frustration, skepticism, warring with the newfound compassion he’s apparently trying out. Holden doesn’t think he likes it very much, which makes him bite back a chuckle.

Finally, he hears a sigh. “...Yeah, that’s okay, Holden. But I don’t think your place is the safest. Why don’t you wait—”

“He doesn’t know my address, Bill, I promise,” Holden insists, head snapping up with his best pleading expression. “He’ll be at the church, I know it, he won't be able to resist it. I just… I’d really like to sleep in my own bed.” He swallows. “It’s been a long week.”

Bill’s eye twitches, but he nods, thin-lipped. “Alright. Get your stuff. I’ll tell Wendy.”

It’s dark outside when they separate with the team. Night is falling fast and the city unwinding. The car ride is quiet. Usually Bill plays the radio this late in the evening, when he’s giving Holden a ride, but tonight he just lights a cigarette and rolls down the window. And _usually_ the road noise acts as a balm on whatever nerves of anticipation or anxiety Holden’s built up for himself over the day, and he _usually_ lets himself be soothed by the peace of it all as they ramble towards their motels, their routines— but tonight, the sound of the tires scraping asphalt is friction under his skin. He grits his teeth and digs his fingers into his thighs to stop them bouncing. 

“Once the Verger clan is serving life, maybe we’ll go interview them,” Bill shatters the silence. “That’d be a hell of a session, yeah?”

Holden hums, noncommittal. Bill shoots him a sidelong glance.

“I’ve never known you to turn down a chance to pick apart a psycho’s brain.”

Holden rolls down his own window, just for something to do with his hands. “I’ve already been in this psycho’s brain more than I’d like,” he tells the passing scenery. “Turns out there wasn’t anything special. He’s just like all the others.” 

There’ll be a trial, eventually, sure, and he’ll testify, but that’s it. After tonight, he’s washing his hands of Morgan Verger.

“You did a good job, Holden,” Bill says, the rare sincerity making his voice gruff, and Holden gives him the smile he knows Bill’s been waiting for. A smile that promises tomorrow he’ll be his old self again, and they can go back to their banter and arguments, back to their psychos and their psychoses. A smile that tells him, as they pull up to the curb outside Holden’s apartment, that Bill doesn’t need to follow him up. 

He sees the relief on Bill’s face in the glow of the street lights, and feels its twin in his own chest.

Bill rolls to a stop and Holden steps out, but he ducks his head back through the window. “Call me when he’s in custody, yeah?”

“Sure thing,” Bill nods, and Holden pats the roof of the car. 

It’s funny, how you forget how to walk when you’re hyper-conscious of someone watching. Holden puts one foot in front of the other as best he can on the pathway to his building, knowing Bill will stay and watch until Holden’s safely inside— and then a little longer, too, which is what Holden’s counting on. He knows Bill knows which window is his, with its little lamp right in front of the glass. He’ll be waiting for the light. 

Holden still throws a wave back towards the car when he gets his keys out and heads into the narrow lobby. 

After all, he’s aiming for normalcy: he detours to his mailbox, first, since he hasn’t checked it in a week now, tucking the little bundle under his elbow and making his way for the elevator. He passes his neighbor, the one who had scowled at him earlier, and gives her his best sunny smile. _Nothing suspicious here, no ma’am._ The thought turns his grin genuine the whole ride up. 

Across town, in just a handful of minutes, Wendy and the tactical squad will be arriving at the church. They’ll climb out of their cars, engines left running and guns drawn, and they’ll charge in all their righteous fury into the chapel, where they will only find an empty altar. There will be no trace of the chosen son, or his imitator. They’ll blink at each other, stupefied, before panic will set in, and here, Holden smirks. 

The elevator groans as its maw opens to his floor, but Holden hardly registers the mildewy carpet squishing underfoot. He feels like he’s floating, like he’s sprouted wings— wings he’s made for himself, since Morgan never did. And, when he takes his keys out of his pocket to unlock his front door, he’s delighted to see the claws are back, gleaming against the metal as he slides the deadbolt back, and opens the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fondly referred to as the Lot’s Wife chapter. it’s all burning, margot. don’t look behind you.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this AU saw me through the insanity that was 2020, and i am wordlessly grateful for that, and especially for the people this fic has brought into my life. every tweet, comment, and kudos made this a blast to write, on top of my own giddiness for this AU that made me write a heckin 103k words (and maybe more to come?? hmmm...) if only i could bring this level of passion to like. my actual responsibilities or original work. but. if it’s gotta go anywhere, i'm really, really glad it’s here. 
> 
> i literally cannot emphasize this enough: SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE SUBSCRIBE to the utterly brilliant [cannibelism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibelism/pseuds/cannibelism), because she's insanely talented but also because she just might have a very, VERY exciting project in the works that I just know y’all are going to adore as much as i do ;)))) her word is canon in this AU and she’s taking it to new and incredible heights, and I cannot wait for you all to see the view
> 
> <3<3<3

Holden switches on the light, and there’s Morgan, sitting in the armchair by the window. 

They’re both silent as Holden sets down his mail and his briefcase and takes off his jacket, draping it on the rack beside the door. He hangs his mask beside it. There are no tape recorders in any pockets, no eyes on the other side of the windows or mirrors, no ears in the walls. There’s no need to hide. 

“Did you bring the wine?” Holden asks, conversationally, as he turns to face his intruder. There’s no reply, and Holden tsks. “That’s too bad. I really could’ve used a drink after the day I just had. What about you, dear? How was work?”

The living room lamp spotlights Morgan in an artificial warm glow, making him a tanned burst of color against the grey of Holden’s decor. He’s sprawled in the seat, his knees wide, seemingly the picture of ease; but even from across the apartment Holden can see the rigidity of his shoulders, the tension in the tic of his jaw. 

Holden walks to his kitchen and opens the fridge, keeping Morgan in his periphery as he pretends to scan over the sparse contents. “I know I promised you dinner, but I didn’t have time to stop at the store. How about we order in? I’m starving.”

“Get on your fucking knees.”

Holden shuts the fridge. “Sorry, baby, I don’t put out ‘til at  _ least _ the third date.”

“Get on your knees, and beg my forgiveness,” Morgan spits, but the tremor in his voice is impossible not to catch. A glint of silver brings Holden’s gaze back to the man. Morgan has a knife clutched in his fist; it’s probably the one he’d had strapped to his ankle during their date, the one he’d used to carve open the junkie like a Christmas ham. Holden can’t help but eye Morgan’s leather jacket a little forlornly. 

He sighs. Does Morgan know about his mothers yet? Holden decides not to ask. Instead, he takes a step closer, sidling along the kitchen peninsula, but he doesn’t quite lean on it. Smugness will earn him no high ground, even if he is holding all the cards. “And why would I do that?”

_ Don’t play with your food, _ his dad murmurs in his head.

_ But that’s the best part, _ his tėtis replies.

“Because I’m going to kill you. But if you beg my forgiveness, I might spare your friends,” Morgan growls. “Or at least, I’ll kill them quickly. You,” he points at Holden with his knife, “I’m going to kill  _ slow.” _

“But is that what you had in mind?” Holden blurts, pausing their sinister banter in favor of his genuine curiosity. He gestures to the barren apartment around them; there’s none of the romantic stained glass of a church, or the sanctity of a cemetery, or even the gritty beauty of a back alley. “This doesn’t…  _ disappoint _ you?” He certainly hopes it does, or else he’d be disappointed himself. “What was  _ my  _ scene? You must have planned it, in case I hadn’t played along. How would you have killed me?”

Morgan’s lips are a thin line that’s growing tighter by the second; Holden doesn’t think he’s too pleased Holden isn’t obeying. 

When it’s clear he’s not going to get an answer, Holden provides one of his own. “I was wondering if it would’ve been Cain and Abel, for the poeticism. Or,” he hums, as the spark of inspiration ignites, the way it does when he’s got a particularly unchatty psychopath in front of them that he’s trying to unravel, “Maybe Michael and Lucifer.  _ That _ would’ve been interesting. One brother casting out another, for his betrayal. Not being  _ holy _ enough. Would you have made me wings? Cast me down from some tall height? I live a few stories up, we can see if the fall would be enough—”

“Enough!” Morgan shouts, and slams his fist down on the chair’s arm; the upholstery and the wood within groans beneath him in protest. Holden’s jaw shuts with a click, and he bites back his smile. Morgan’s veneer is chipping like porcelain, like old paint. He’s snarling and wild-eyed, just like his father. “It doesn’t matter, because I am going to  _ cut your goddamn throat.” _

“Well that’s not very original—”

“I’m going to cut your throat, and then I’m going to go kill Bill Tench. I think,” Morgan interrupts. “I think I’ll let Dr. Carr live, but not because she deserves to. She’ll live so she can tell  _ everybody _ that the FBI had another rat under its floorboards, and your precious BSU will fall to pieces.” 

“And what?” Holden asks, blasé. “You’ll get off scot-free? The whole world believes you’re a murderer, thanks to Freddie and me.”

“I told you before: I know how to make things disappear.”

Holden drags a languid finger along the laminate counter, thinking of another table, set for dinner, not too long ago. “I’m not sure that’s going to be as easy as you think,” he says slowly, so that Morgan doesn’t miss a word. “Your mother attacked a federal officer today. Your  _ other _ mother is currently in my boss’ office for questioning. Anything either of them try to say in your defense will be dismissed out of hand.” Finally, he gives in and rests his chin on his hand. “There’s no one left in your corner, Morgan, and trust me: you’re cornered.”

That snaps the final straw for Morgan, apparently, because he’s up and lunging to the kitchen in four short steps, but Holden saw it coming, and he hoists himself up and over the counter into the living room, out of Morgan’s reach. Morgan dives after him across the narrow surface, knife slashing wildly, a mirror of his mother just hours before, but Holden grabs the man’s wrist and slams it down at just the right angle on the counter’s edge, and the sickening crack of the bones breaking echoes through the tiny space. The dagger tumbles from Morgan’s fingers, and Holden snatches it before it even hits the ground. 

Morgan cries out, half-pain, half-rage, but even with one hand incapacitated he makes for Holden again. Their positions switched, Holden backs up into the living room, knife at the ready. Morgan snarls like a lion and bares his teeth, and Holden grins in reply. 

“This is your fault,” Holden says, pointing the knife. “I was ready to give you everything.” Morgan roars again and lumbers clumsily forward, but Holden sidesteps him laughably easily, and grabs him into a headlock. Morgan’s fists collide against his thighs, but Holden barely feels it. “We could’ve remade the world in our image.” Beneath him, Morgan screams, wordless. 

“But you’re a false god,” Holden tells him, and drops the brunt of his weight to slam Morgan to the floor. 

Their combined weight is enough to rattle the coffee table beside their heads. Holden looms above him, jamming his forearm into Morgan’s windpipe to stun him, fingers gripping his collar, while his other hand presses the tip of the knife  _ just so _ against Morgan’s stomach. “Nothing but a scared little boy.” With that, he buries the knife in Morgan’s gut.

He thinks, distantly, that he wishes his fathers could see him. They would be proud, he’s sure: it’s like a dance, a bloody ballet in a perfect mirror, as with one graceful swoop, Holden drags the knife through Morgan’s belly and flips them at the same time, so that Morgan is above him, stunned and gasping, the blood gushing from his stomach onto Holden’s chest. But again, the heat of the liquid barely registers.

“Do you know what my fathers did to your father?” Holden murmurs sweetly, and his grin only broadens as confusion skitters across Morgan’s foggy glare. But Holden doesn’t let it fester before he’s pressing on, fingers twisting ever-deeper in the fabric of Morgan’s collar. “They made him eat his own face. And now,” he lowers his voice to a whisper and pulls Morgan closer until he can feel his own breath blooming across Morgan’s parted lips, “I’m going to eat yours.” 

He drags Morgan into a kiss. 

Like that night in the alley, it’s more fight than kiss, but this time Holden has the upper hand, even if Morgan’s on top of him, because this time he’s ready. Morgan, startled, has his mouth still open in its rasp, and Holden licks across the man’s teeth until his mouth opens wider. Holden, maybe a little recklessly, lets himself revel in it for a moment: he doesn’t know the next time he’ll kiss someone who knows who he is, who he doesn’t have to pretend with, pull back his instincts to turn a kiss angry and feral, blur the lines between romance and ruin, because they go hand in hand, really, don’t they.

But a moment is all he has. Bewildered, Morgan gasps instinctually into the kiss because Holden’s his only source of air, now, but maybe some primal part of him is just as thrilled as Holden is, because his tongue crosses the border into Holden’s mouth, too. And that’s when Holden shoves him back. He hears Morgan’s head collide with the coffee table, feels the stutter of his tongue and his startled inhale drawing the air right from Holden’s lungs, and Holden chases it forward and angles his head, and grabs Morgan’s tongue deep between his teeth.

He bites. 

Morgan’s scream is guttural enough that Holden can feel it in his own sternum. Morgan shoves at him, scrabbling at Holden’s shirt for something to hold and fight. Holden lets Morgan use his own momentum to hurl himself backwards, but Holden doesn’t relent the clench of his jaw until he feels the hot spray of blood across his face. 

Only then, the detached muscle still between Holden’s teeth, does Morgan free himself. He’s wild-eyed and terrified as he goes sprawling back across the carpet, blood gushing freely down his chin and onto his chest. 

Holden would fucking love to keep chewing, but he spits out the hunk of meat onto the floor and rises smoothly to his feet. He towers over Morgan as the man tries and fails to slide back across the carpet, the denim of his pants snagging at the fibers. He makes it to the divide between the carpet and the kitchen tile before his elbows give out, and Holden drops again to straddle his thighs. 

Settling his weight across them, he grabs Morgan’s wrists to pin above his head. Blood continues spurting over the man’s chin, and Holden wants nothing more than to give in to his baser instincts and drag his tongue across the mess. But he doesn’t. 

“I cannot  _ begin _ to tell you how lucky you are,” Holden says, wistfully. “Because despite how I was raised, despite everything in me, I’m going to let you live. This is one of those rare and unhappy instances where you’re worth more alive than dead.” He rolls his eyes. “Worth more to my freedom, that is.  _ You _ are nothing to me. Nothing  _ compared  _ to me.”

Morgan tries to scream again, but with the blood rapidly pooling in his mouth, it’s only a gurgle. Holden watches as the man’s eyes narrow with one last ounce of fight, and he spits that blood in Holden’s face. 

The liquid drips down Holden’s cheek to the corners of his mouth, and Holden’s tongue darts out to lick it up like melted ice cream. His eyelids flutter in a fleeting moment of bliss. Morgan gurgles again. The horror in his eyes is almost just as delicious.

“There’s nothing you can do to hurt me now, baby,” Holden murmurs sweetly. “They’ll never believe a word you say. Well.  _ Try _ to say.” And then he slams Morgan’s head on the tile and knocks him unconscious.

He really had wondered at the scene Morgan would have made of him, just as he had wondered at the scene he would have made of Morgan, if he didn’t have to play the victim. The best he can do is a crude imitation: he tugs Morgan’s jacket down the man’s arms, tying it into a makeshift tourniquet around the stomach wound— it’s not a very deep cut, and as Holden well knows, it’s perfectly survivable— in the guise of a shroud. The mess pooling beneath his curls from his mouth serves as a shattered halo; the gore at his feet the flames of hell. 

To anyone else, the scene will just look like an attempt to control the blood loss; to Holden, it’s the final rite. They may share a face, but Morgan will be Judgment, while Holden will be Resurrection.

His tableau complete, he shoves up from the body with a sigh. That sigh turns to a groan when he looks down at the state of his own bloodied clothes. 

Careful to stay out of sight of the window, he walks back across the living room; as he approaches, the glow of the lamp makes his saturated shirt gleam, like it’s stained with ink. His wrapped hands are blood soaked, both Morgan’s blood and his own, seeping through the bandages; his stitches must have ripped. He smears the back of his hand across his mouth to cover up the streaks he’d licked away. 

He sighs again, and looks over his shoulder to scold Morgan’s limp form. “What a waste.” Then he kicks over the lamp. 

He’s slumped against the wall by Morgan’s body again when Bill busts through the door two minutes later, bellowing Holden’s name, gun drawn. He cuts off almost comically when he spots Holden.

Holden gives a weak wave, his hands visibly shaking. “I’m okay.”

To describe Bill as stunned would be the understatement of the century. Eyes wide, he nears slowly, gesturing to Morgan with his gun. “Is he alive?”

Holden softly thunks his head back against the wall, but nods. “Just unconscious.”

Bill holsters his weapon and reaches out a hand for Holden, heedless of the blood soaking his skin, and Holden takes it gratefully, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. Bill doesn’t let go of him, instead moving his grip to clasp Holden’s bicep, and Holden leans into the touch— and he doesn’t even have to pretend to relish the contact. 

“That’s twice now,” Holden comments, wearily. “In one day, even.”

“Shit, Holden,” Bill mutters. “I could’ve found you dead on the kitchen floor right now.”

“How’d you know to come back?” 

“I was halfway to the church when they radio’d that Morgan hadn’t shown. I was coming back to get you when I saw the lamp fall.”

Holden nods. “He was waiting for me when I walked in.”

“Shit.” 

The sound of sirens fades in down the street, growing louder, and if Morgan’s yelling hadn’t alerted Holden’s entire apartment block, they would certainly know something was up now. Holden hopes he won’t have to move. “Here comes the cavalry.”

A few moments later there’s a flurry of footsteps in the hallway, and four agents dash through his front door, followed by Wendy hot at their heels. She halts in her tracks when she sees the carnage on the floor, and on Holden. “The hell— Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” Holden assures. 

Bill explains the base details to her and the agents, who haul Morgan’s body from the floor and cuff him, even though he’s not putting up much of a fight in his current state. He moans lightly but his eyes stay closed as they drag him off. Even Holden can’t help a wince of sympathy when he glimpses the awkward angle of one of Morgan’s hands. 

“Did you do that?” Wendy asks, looking to where the agents have disappeared with Morgan. There’s sure to be more crawling up the elevator in no time, here to turn Holden’s home into yet another crime scene. He wonders absently if Wendy would let him crash at her place again. 

He’ll give his formal statement later, and that’ll be minced down into the palatable story the FBI will give the press, but here in his gory apartment, he gives a simple, if skewed, version of the truth. “I broke his wrist. Got his knife from him and got him on the floor. But he twisted us around, so I knocked his head into the table. He bit through his tongue.” He looks to the carpet and wrinkles his nose. “It’s somewhere in there.”

“Shit,” Wendy echoes. 

Holden wipes at his face with his sleeve again, then grimaces. “That’s  _ two _ suits now this guy has ruined.”

“Forget the suit, look at your fucking carpet,” Bill says.

“There goes my security deposit.”

And then Holden lets his knees give out on him, and he almost collapses to the ground, but Wendy and Bill are there to catch him before he does. They help guide him to the door, vacating the space for the techs and agents to come in, but as they near the threshold Holden glances down so he doesn’t trip— and catches sight of his mail, abandoned by his briefcase when he’d come in.

There, half-hidden beneath an electrical bill, on the corner of a letter, is an international stamp. Holden pauses, and his partners make a noise of confusion, but he dips down and picks up the letter instead. Or rather, a postcard, of a mountainscape. 

A postcard, he knows, when he turns it over, will have a phone number on the back, scrawled in Hannibal’s beautiful calligraphic font. But he doesn’t turn it over now, under so many prying eyes. Instead, he just tucks it into his pocket, and nods for his partners to continue.

And he smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, holden my love.
> 
> this final fight borrowed HEAVILY from the final fight in hannibal 3x13, almost without realizing at first (tiny knife, leather jacket, lol) but then very deliberately after i noticed. i hope it lived up to expectations!! the tongue bite was really just. my favorite thing. a proper mindhannibal valentine's celebration, yes? 
> 
> again again again, subscribe to [cannibelism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannibelism/pseuds/cannibelism)! holden’s hungry, but not for too much longer… 
> 
> thank you again so so much for all the love <3
> 
> and, of course, i don’t own/profit from hannibal/mindhunter, etc etc, disclaimers disclaimers~ is this even still a thing


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